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Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

theguardian.com

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Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#301

Post by anaganisk »

bobthechef wrote: post #160

Incidentally, how do people working at Amazon and other FAANGs justify their cooperation or even direct role in BigTech's onward march toward total control and saturation and its use of abusive and coercive practices? I'm sure many of them frequent HN. I'm sure many on HN would like to hear what they have to say.

All the outrage here seems funny for me, many people here work for tech who are "pioneers" in data sniffing. They're all enablers in their own companies, but get offended when another company does it. They just become silent watchers. I once had a argument with a googler who said. We think a lot before doing something, so what we do is always the best. Results are always like something like above. We in the tech zone have some weird arrogance.

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#302

Post by fapjacks »

tzs wrote: post #88
alpha_squared wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another story on the front page right now[0] from the WSJ[1] seems to imply that arbitration clauses fall apart when faced with a mountain of arbitration demands (75k+). Amazon is now seeking to remove its own arbitration clause for customers so that these can be consolidated into a class action lawsuit. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27356550 [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-faced-75-000-arbitration…

Something like that happened to Doordash a little over a year ago [1] [2]. Workers wanted to start a class action, Doordash used their arbitration clause to stop that. Over 5000 workers then asked for arbitration, which would have cost Doordash around $10 million in arbitration fees. Doordash then tried to get a judge to make it a class action. The judge felt that this Doordash was in this mess due to their own hypoc…

I interviewed at Doordash when they were just starting. I think I would have been like employee number twelve or something. To this day, I have not interviewed with a founder that repelled me more.

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#303

Post by anaganisk »

I wonder how would AWS feel if OEM's of the data center devices decide to share AWS's very costly bandwidth to proxy their other clients data. Imagine the outrage by Amazon.

Imagine Volvo or any truck manufacturers decide to ship their other client's packages, using Amazons fleet (next day delivery for every service) Thats how this feels to me. The nerve on Amazon to push this shit after people bought the devices already and to make it opt-out. What are the devs at there smoking.

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#304

Post by stedaniels »

bambax wrote: post #299
remarkEon wrote: post #68

Article doesn't mention it, but this is how you opt-out (there are others but this one has screenshots). https://www.tomsguide.com/reference/what-is-amazon-sidewalk Added to my list for the next time I'm on the phone with my parents, for our (weekly at this point) how-to sessions on "stopping the industry I work in from spying on you". I really, really wish product managers would understand the kind of ecosystem they…

> what problem does Amazon thinks this solves? To that I ask: what problem does Alexa solve?? Why does one need a device to switch the lights?!? or turn music on or off. How much is one willing to pay for a minuscule, incremental particle of convenience. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I think Alexa users only have themselves to blame.

Whole house music for me.

Assisted living for many.

For both of these it's the ease and affordability that it brings.

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#305

Post by Dah00n »

KeepFlying wrote: post #211
Dah00n wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you block Google's DNS IPs? That will break Chromecast in strange ways.

Maybe someday I'll write a rewrite rule to pass google DNS through my PiHole...maybe. All of this hardcoded DNS server BS in iot devices is a pain.

A warning from someone who did exactly this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27214320

TL;DR I tried to force Chromecast (and everything else) to use Pihole as DNS and misbehaving devices (like Chromecast) hammered my pihole into oblivion. I'm talking tens of thousands of requests in a very short amount of time which caused my RPI4 to stop responding to DNS requests (dashboard was still working though). See linked comment thread for details but suffice to say 4 virtual machines with pihole behind two load balancers still saw some downtime. OPNsense gateway is a much better (and safer!) fix IMO :)

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#306

Post by bigfudge »

jb775 wrote: post #256
socialist_coder wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The apple airtag devices do the same thing. They can get online via any apple device. Not sure if that applies to other FindMy devices though. I hope it does =)

When this tech falls into the wrong hands we are all so screwed.

Some people would argue it already is in the wrong hands. Without any conspiracy theory required, it is controlled by a tiny, wealthy elite with power and connections to manipulate our political discourse and ensure their new power is not scrutinised.

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#307

Post by bigfudge »

nanidin wrote: post #97
remarkEon wrote: post #68

Article doesn't mention it, but this is how you opt-out (there are others but this one has screenshots). https://www.tomsguide.com/reference/what-is-amazon-sidewalk Added to my list for the next time I'm on the phone with my parents, for our (weekly at this point) how-to sessions on "stopping the industry I work in from spying on you". I really, really wish product managers would understand the kind of ecosystem they…

Every time this Sidewalk concern style story crops up (which it has several times over the last 6-12 months), I have rechecked that Sidewalk is disabled. So far I have not found it set to anything except for disabled. I hope Amazon isn’t doing a gradual roll out to enable, as if I find it enabled at any point in the future, I am done with Amazon devices in my home. As far as I’m concerned based on Amazon Logistics pe…

So the tax evasion, worker abuses and militant anti-unionisation weren't enough!

I often see comments like this, and I truly wonder if anything would prevent people from using Amazon. I don't want to criticise you specifically — it's so easy to say you would switch but becoming increasingly difficult to do. And motivated cognition is really a thing.

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#308

Post by luma »

ThatPlayer wrote: post #153
tkinom wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a fun project for the future Black Hack conf: Implement tor / torrent on top of Amazon mash network and break all the bandwidth limits.

It's probably not possible. The devices runs on LoRa wireless protocol, which measures bandwidth in single digit kilobits a second.

And is also subject to radio airtime fairness rules in ISM bands, meaning the radio cannot be transmitting more than 1% of the time based on jurisdiction.

I think if people had a better understanding of how LoRa works they'd freak out a little less. This entire thread of comments appears to be mostly based on some substantial misconceptions around the capabilities being surfaced here.

LoRa isn't wifi, enabling LoRa doesn't create an IP attack surface, and the bandwidth is so hilariously low as to be trivial. You can exfiltrate tens to hundreds of bytes with these things.

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#309

Post by dudul »

sokoloff wrote: post #80
vincent-toups wrote: post #14

I'd rather go without internet than have one of these damned smart devices in my house. I can't believe how popular they are.

I have my IoT/IoS devices cordoned off onto their own network locally (with internet access, of course) as a matter of trying to protect my LAN from any exploit. However, I find the convenience of these devices to be extremely high: they play music, they give us convenient timers, they function as a whole house intercom, they tell us the weather and answer (often poorly) some random questions without going to get our…

> However, I find the convenience of these devices to be extremely high: they play music, they give us convenient timers, they function as a whole house intercom, they tell us the weather and answer (often poorly) some random questions without going to get our phones out.

I genuinely can't tell if this is sarcasm.

Re: Amazon US customers given one week to opt out of mass wireless sharing

#310

Post by sokoloff »

dudul wrote: post #309
sokoloff wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have my IoT/IoS devices cordoned off onto their own network locally (with internet access, of course) as a matter of trying to protect my LAN from any exploit. However, I find the convenience of these devices to be extremely high: they play music, they give us convenient timers, they function as a whole house intercom, they tell us the weather and answer (often poorly) some random questions without going to get our…

> However, I find the convenience of these devices to be extremely high: they play music, they give us convenient timers, they function as a whole house intercom, they tell us the weather and answer (often poorly) some random questions without going to get our phones out. I genuinely can't tell if this is sarcasm.

It’s 100% genuine, 0% sarcasm. Shaving minutes everyday, making music a more frequent presence in my life, all with a non-contact interaction is a noticeable convenience and quality of life improvement. Sure, I could install a wired intercom, buy different Bluetooth speakers and futz with my phone to play music, clean my hands every time I wanted to adjust a timer in the kitchen, etc.
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