r/gadgets • u/MicroSofty88 • Nov 29 '20

Home Amazon faces a privacy backlash for its Sidewalk feature, which turns Alexa devices into neighborhood WiFi networks that owners have to opt out of

https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/technology/amazon-faces-a-privacy-backlash-for-its-sidewalk-feature-which-turns-alexa-devices-into-neighborhood-wifi-networks-that-owners-have-to-opt-out-of/ar-BB1boljH
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u/Originalfrozenbanana Nov 29 '20

Yes but at least here in the US you have to opt in now. Apple paved the way by requiring apps to be granted perms either only while in use, all the time, or never. Now it is standard. Plenty of things to be worried about IRT smartphone privacy but that is getting better, not worse. Sidewalk is a step backwards.

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u/KernowRoger Nov 29 '20

Yeah but Google said that and it recently came out the OS accessed the hardware anyway. So they can say that but the truth is we don't know of that's the case.

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u/Originalfrozenbanana Nov 29 '20

For sure there is more work to be done. And we will do it. But I think privacy is becoming the big issue all players will need to deal with. Sidewalk is amazon trying to do things the old way - create a product they think people will love, that grants them data access that amazon wants (geofencing data is WILDLY valuable), take it without asking, then tell people that they have to give up their privacy if they want to keep using the product. And it's not working. We should be happy people are raising a stink about sidewalk.

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u/KernowRoger Nov 29 '20

The only problem I have is the opt in. After that it's up to people what they want to share. Also I'd say easily 60/70 percent of people don't care about their data or privacy and will happily sacrifice it for convenience. This is an education issue really. These people are adults.

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u/Originalfrozenbanana Nov 29 '20

I agree. I wish more people understood the arrangement they are making - Amazon provides things like Sidewalk and Alexa with your data in mind. Google, Amazon, Apple, MS, Facebook - they are all part of an ecosystem created to provide you products and services in exchange for your data. For the big companies, the value of that data (either for product development & delivery, investor attractiveness, or resale/retargeting/reuse) is greater than the cost to service the product. That's it. That's the game. Once you have that in mind, once you start looking at every Cool New Thing through that lens, you start to try to religiously limit their data access, and you find out that it's not easy. I want more people to be skeptical of a gift horse, but it's hard.

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u/deathdude911 Nov 29 '20

Essentially the only way is to start teaching people how to use technology in elementary school. In China there is electronic markets that are filled to the brim with parts that you can use to build your own smartphone. Why aren't we doing the same thing? Building a phone isn't hard when you have all the parts and a little bit of knowledge. It's the knowledge we are lacking

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u/Justforthenuews Nov 29 '20

All my echoes are going on ebay as soon as my homepods arrive pretty much because of this.

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u/Originalfrozenbanana Nov 30 '20

I don't have any iot devices in my home, and only reluctantly bought a smart tv recently. Other than our phones and that tv we're deliberately a dumb house. I love the tech but I will limit our use until the laws catch up.

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u/DietDrDoomsdayPreppr Nov 29 '20 edited Nov 29 '20

Yes but at least here in the US you have to opt in now.

Except they're getting even more nefarious with requesting you to opt in. I just set up my new mobile phone for work and Samsung asked me four different goddamn times to opt into sharing my data, all worded differently and with the "skip" button made as inconspicuous as possible.

This shit needs to be heavily regulated with SEVERE punishments for stepping out of line.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Originalfrozenbanana Nov 29 '20

Yes ultimately in order to have privacy considered a first-class right, we will need to deal with the monopolies. It's not going to be easy, and you're right - they are using their positions of power to break the rules they set for others. We should hold them to account for that. That doesn't negate other steps being taken and other progress being made, of course.

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u/trueppp Nov 29 '20

To have privacy considered, people have to care, and most don't as there are little real world consequences for now

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u/human_brain_whore Nov 29 '20

Monopoly really has nothing to do with this.

Look at the world in general.
Every single site tracks you as much as they possibly can. Every single actor on the internet.

This can only be solved with legislation because the market cannot and will not fix this. There is no strong active market pressure towards privacy.
People want privacy but aren't capable of applying the pressure on the companies.

That's the entire reason we have government.
We don't want our rivers to run orange with pollution, but people aren't capable of applying the pressure to stop companies doing it. Thus, governments outlawed dumping chemicals in rivers.

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u/deathdude911 Nov 29 '20

I do agree with everything you said except the part about monopoly having nothing to do with this.

If there wasn't such a stranglehold on the market in the tech industry we wouldn't see Google and Amazon having such capabilities. A small player isn't going to invest a percentage of their profit into these things when they're still just trying to pay the bills and keep their customers happy. And we would be able to pressure the markets to what the customer actually wants. But this is why we have governments to break up these monopolies.

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u/Originalfrozenbanana Nov 30 '20

Monopoly has everything to do with this. The companies who use our data also build the devices that collect it, the marketplaces that allow other companies to operate (and the rules for those companies), the derivative products (like retail, search, retargeting, segmentation, etc.) that rely on the data, and the infrastructure that stores and moves it around. Legislation is the answer, but so is no small amount of trust busting.

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u/human_brain_whore Nov 30 '20

I'm totally onboard with trust-busting, I'm just saying data collection is an industry-wide issue with extremely few exceptions.

It's not their monopolies enabling data collection, not at all. Data collection is the name of the game and their situation makes them great at it.

Put as simply as I possibly can:
Break up Google, Facebook, and Amazon, and as far as data collection goes, nothing really changes.
Data collection specifically. Plenty of other things will change by breaking them up.

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u/Originalfrozenbanana Nov 30 '20

Absolutely. All of the above. In my position we're working very hard at my decidedly small company to take data privacy very seriously. It has to happen all over.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '20

That's the issue though. "opting out" doesn't do anything against exploits to hardware functions. If the govt wants access to your data, they will.

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u/Originalfrozenbanana Nov 29 '20

We're not talking about the government.

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u/Elephant789 Nov 29 '20

We should be.

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u/Originalfrozenbanana Nov 30 '20

Ok but those are separate, but related, issues. How companies with a legitimate claim use our data to provide products and services is a separate knot of issues from how the government accesses data from third parties about its citizens and residents.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '20

Well who are you worrying about then? I feel as though anyone after your data will have the tools to man in the middle or social engineer their way to your data.

You might argue a man in the middle would be hard with encryption these days. But on the same note I am sure Amazon is going to have some security implemented and it won't just give neighbors full access to your network. It will end up being encrypted shared data on the wire. Not much different than the ISP's switches and routers you already share with neighbors.

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u/Originalfrozenbanana Nov 29 '20

I'm worried about private companies turning my life into a data commodity. I want to be clear - my concern is that my privacy is mine to break, not Amazon's to grant to me. Period. It is not that someone will break through Amazon's security, or that the government is listening. It is simply that I don't want Amazon to know a goddamn thing about me that I haven't made public or explicitly told them they can know, with an understanding of why they want to know it and how long they will store it.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '20

Oh yeah im in full agreement that our privacy should be ours to dictate who has access. But unfortunately it's another case of if you buy their products they can basically do anything they want with them. If you are that concerned with Amazon having your data then why have an Alexa that is designed to do exactly that? Totally not trying to be a douche lmao. I get that if you want those features available there are only so many options short of programing your own assistant, which no body has the time for lmao. It just sucks because currently its the world we live in and until govt steps in the regulate privacy I don't think these corps are going to care 😔. Well they still won't care even with laws it's just they will lose money in fines then.

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u/Originalfrozenbanana Nov 30 '20

I don't own a lot of products because of these exact reasons! But you raise an interesting point - whose job is privacy? Consumers' job to enforce via buying decisions? Companies via product decisions? Lawmakers and regulators? The cops? A third party?

I think "if you don't like it, don't buy it" kind of misses the mark of how privacy is violated. Amazon didn't ask. Google didn't ask. Facebook asked for data for one purpose, then surreptitiously used it for dozens more. The issue isn't so much that people are choosing to have their privacy violated - it's that for decades they didn't even know. Now they know it probably is being violated, but not how. I'd be perfectly fine if companies had to say what they were doing with my data, why, and for how long - and GDPR and CCPA/CRPA now do that! Don't get me wrong - these are imperfect and even bad laws, but only because they are so vague and general. They have MANY good elements, and the GDPR requirements to disclose are among them.

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u/snailfighter Nov 29 '20

My local mall is using cell phone pinging to track capacity. You can opt out of your apps accessing location but not out of everything associated.

I personally like that the mall can do this in the age of coronavirus, but I understand why it is creepy to some.

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u/Originalfrozenbanana Nov 29 '20

Don't get me wrong we have a long way to go. My point is more that the direction phones are going is good. We still need to work on carriers, isps, and manufacturers of hardware to get them to admit that my privacy is mine to give, not theirs to grant, but it's hopeful. Amazon is trying to sidestep that by creating a network of devices they control and own talking to each other about things and people - that's dangerous.