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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

#311

Post by sokoloff »

seized wrote: post #258
mercora wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would periodically get it working and then it would periodically break. wait a second... it worked sometimes? without doing any routing trickery or something? If you did some trickery maybe the devices sometimes chose to speak ipv6 but could not?

You need an mDNS repeater. With that and the appropriate ports opened in the firewall I have cross VLAN casting working perfectly reliably. OpnSense is the firewall.

Thanks! I’ll try that next time I get an hour or so to mess with it.

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

#312

Post by schmappel »

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…

Thanks for the opt-out link. Weirdly, step 3 is missing, there's no Amazon Sidewalk link in my app.

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

#313

Post by monkeynotes »

parcec wrote: post #261
kergonath wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making something opt-out because you know that people would not opt in voluntarily is a class of evil on its own. It is simply fraud and deception.

Organ donation is opt out. Do you consider that evil?

Presumption of consent in the context of organ donation is a very complex topic[1]. Amazon stealing your network is not a profound moral quandary, and comparing the two as level ground is either an indication of lack of comprehension or intentionally being a bad faith contributor to the argument. Either way it's not a helpful avenue of debate.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6475984/

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

#314

Post by detaro »

remarkEon wrote: post #127
nanidin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I bought my mom an Echo for Christmas last year for the kitchen, since she likes making lists and setting timers for baking and her hands are starting to show their age (she’s 63, ‘bout that time I guess). Really grating that what was at one time a helpful device for older folks is now retroactively being turned into yet another internet surveillance device.

How is it now more of a surveillance device than it was before? What exactly is it now surveilling in addition?

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

#315

Post by prepend »

ikiris wrote: post #279
prepend wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unpaid I paid $200 (although much cheaper now) for my echo years ago. This isn’t a free device and the services it provides cost me actual money to be able to use. Pretty funny to spin this as “you paid $200 for this device, but all the services on it are free.”

Do you think it's stealing your power too?

I don’t think that’s relevant as I spend power to make this tool operational. I still paid for the tool. It wasn’t free.

I also provide shelter, insurance, cleaning, etc.

I was commenting on how GP called the functions of the Echo “free” when they are certainly not free.

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

#316

Post by _ea1k »

failwhaleshark wrote: post #225
_ea1k wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like 20 years ago we would have complimented them for such an ingenious solution to backup network capability for security related devices. I don't love the lack of consent involved, but the concerns are way overblown here.

Moral panic about something insignificant when they already invited internet-connected cameras and microphones recording 24/7 that self-update and change functionality all of the time into their homes voluntarily. It seems like much a knee-jerk tantrum about nothing, and the same people will love it later when they find their keys or wallet.

Fair point, tbh. A few folks in here are isolating these things to IOT networks. But I get the feeling that a lot of people complaining are the same people that will gladly buy a cheap camera from a random brand off Amazon and just trust it.

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

#317

Post by mercora »

seized wrote: post #258
mercora wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would periodically get it working and then it would periodically break. wait a second... it worked sometimes? without doing any routing trickery or something? If you did some trickery maybe the devices sometimes chose to speak ipv6 but could not?

You need an mDNS repeater. With that and the appropriate ports opened in the firewall I have cross VLAN casting working perfectly reliably. OpnSense is the firewall.

that's what i thought too. or somehow having to to relay specific broadcasts or similar ways to make the discovery work. this is why i had the impression it could be related to some routing trickery that might had worked for ipv4 but not for ipv6 and the discovery process could make it appear as they are on the same network segment while link-local ipv6 is available when in fact its not...

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

#318

Post by barbazoo »

Spivak wrote: post #214
barbazoo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. And what, you're gonna rely on some neighbor's AMZN device proxying the internet for you? I hope the availability of that "smart" sensor or whatever isn't too important.

It’s not an Internet proxy. There is so much misinformation about this it’s nuts. It’s a network to talk to AWS IoT API. It’s not giving random devices access to your network.

Am I misunderstanding? Some device belonging to property X uses the internet connection of property Y to connect to the internet to talk to AWS. Isn't that what's happening? Or is there some kind of VPN being used here?

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

#319

Post by frumper »

kwdc wrote: post #229

The talking hockey puck in the corner is becoming even more problematic. One week? Why the deadline? At all? They do seem like they're in a hurry. For something that is meant to help and apparently put smiles on our faces it does seem like high pressure. Perhaps its less about the smiles then? Maybe not about the helping either.

It's not a deadline, you can opt-out after it launches. The date is just when it becomes active. I'm not sure when it was first announced, but it wasn't today. I opt-ed out a few days ago when I saw it in the news. I think it's just making the news rounds because it's so close to the launch.

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

#320

Post by aaronfitz »

katbyte wrote: post #291
sokoloff wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dedicated SSID(s) with that/those SSID configured as a guest network goes pretty far. I happen to use Ubiquiti gear, but most any router is likely capable of creating a dedicated guest SSID (or multiple). That covers wireless devices (which is all the IoT stuff that I have). The one aggravation I had was trying to get the Chromecasts to work correctly (where I wanted to be able to cast from a machine on the main LAN…

i have my chromecasts and computers on two different vlans and works just fine, but there are a few things you need to do, ensure MDNS works between then and open up a half dozen or so ports.

Do you happen to have a list of the ports you had to open?
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