General > General Technical Chat
Amazon Sidewalk will soon share your Internet with your neighbors
duckduck:
It seems to me that Amazon are doing this (in part) to counter Apple's "Find My" program ( https://www.apple.com/icloud/find-my/ ). Apple already has millions of connected devices reporting the location of your connected Apple or authorized 3rd party devices.
Amazon also has a network of millions of devices that they control. Consumers paid for these Amazon devices, and pay the bills for internet connectivity for these devices. Why not slice off a little bit of bandwidth, and then sell access to this huge network to 3rd party companies? The benefit to consumers is devices that work anywhere, automatically, with no setup. No more configuring IP addresses, subnet mask, gateway address, dns address, etc. The benefit to 3rd party companies is that devices will "just connect". Amazon gets to learn where consumers go, what devices they use, when and how often.
Remember that once Amazon tracks your Sidewalk-enabled fitness wristband, key fob, or kindle fire, this data is legally discoverable in court cases and can be requested by law enforcement. Amazon will know which church you attend, which topless bar you attend, where you live, and will know when you spend a couple of hours at a motel when you told your wife that you were working late. Also, remember that Amazon has a USD600 million contract with the CIA (which also swaps data with "five eyes" countries). What would Amazon be willing to do to keep their CIA contract?
Selling on Amazon grants access to a huge market with the payments and shipping taken care of for you. However, you are dealing with the devil because now Amazon knows more about your customers than you do. Amazon has a history of turning this knowledge against the sellers by offering Amazon-branded merchandise that competes with sellers' items. I predict that Amazon will do the same for 3rd party IoT devices that use the Amazon Sidewalk network.
EDIT:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Sidewalk#Technology
Amazon Sidewalk amalgamates multiple physical layer wireless networking protocols and presents them into a single application layer they call "Sidewalk Application Layer".
Transmission technologies:
- Bluetooth Low Energy for short distances and battery efficiency
- LoRa for long-range low-power communication
- Frequency-shift keying at 900 MHz, intended for interacting with legacy home appliances like garage door openers
Rick Law:
--- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on May 31, 2021, 05:47:27 pm ---It's easy to opt out of this. Open the Alexa app and go to Settings->Account Settings->Amazon Sidewalk and set the slider to Disabled.
--- End quote ---
The "Disabled" switch still leaves you with the choice of trusting that it actually is disabled as we define disabled, or merely operate in a way they can argue as "disabled".
I can see that they could just as likely to implement "disabled" as your use of others' connection is disabled while keeping the ability of others to use your ISP connection.
Frankly, it is rather hard to trust them to be honorable.
MrMobodies:
--- Quote from: themadhippy on May 31, 2021, 11:16:53 am ---BT in the uk were doing this some time ago under the name of openzone.
--- End quote ---
And I see at the local pub that they're charging like £39 behind their backs for a week for anyone non BT customer when joining their other BT wifi station with portal.
I think it is called another name now, BT FON?
https://fon.com/bt-wifi-with-fon-rebranding/
--- Quote ---BT Fon Becomes BT WiFi with Fon
In the last days, BT and Fon have rebranded their joint WiFi service. This rebranding is the result of a collective effort between BT and Fon to simplify WiFi access for its customers and members, making it easy to find and recognize all around the UK. We’re really excited about it. But before we tell you about the rebranding, let us recap just where we’ve come from.
A little bit of history: BT has been Fon’s partner since the very beginning. In fact, they’ve been with us since October 2007, and soon, we will be celebrating five years of continuous commitment to each other.
BT partnered with us because they wanted to let their subscribers easily become Fon members, participating in a worldwide and increasingly growing WiFi community. To make this happen, we worked out a way to integrate the Fon sharing function into the BT Home Hubs. BT’s customers loved the way that they could easily join Fon, and enjoy our entire worldwide network of WiFi hotspots for free.
Together, we have grown the network in the UK to over 3.5 million hotspots. While BT certainly benefits from the WiFi network (after all, it offers a world of service differentiation), the real winners are their customers and Fon members, who are happy to be able to roam on our huge network for free. Of course, at Fon we love this partnership because it helps our community grow!
But growing popularity brought a bit of confusion: Prior to this rebranding, BT had two WiFi names: BT Fon and BT Openzone. BT Fon was the residential offering, where people joined Fon and agreed to share the unused portion of their internet connection in exchange for a world of free WiFi. BT Openzone was in public areas such as airports. We realized that this could confuse customers.
So over the past few months, we have been working with BT to create a brand that is easy to understand, making it easy for customers to understand to which network they connect.
BT Wi-fi is born: BT Fon and BT Openzone hotspots are now under one roof called BT Wi-fi. This means Fon members still get the same incredible unlimited access across the UK and full access to the more than 6 million Fon hotspots across the world. In order to simplify the branding, we changed BT Openzone to BT WiFi and BT Fon to BT WiFi with Fon.
If you are a Fon member (including BT broadband customers), just look for the ‘BTWiFi-with-Fon’ signal and connect. BT Openzone’s SSID is now BTWiFi.
What’s more, access passes are now valid in the entire BT Wi-fi network, whether you are logging in on a BTWiFi-with-Fon signal, or on a BTWiFi signal.
The rebranding not only simplifies BT’s WiFi offerings, but also better integrates BT and Fon, strengthening the partnership between us even further. Under this new, coherent brand, BT and Fon will continue to work together to further expand the largest WiFi network in the UK (and indeed the whole world)- A continued effort to offer the best WiFi service anywhere!
Besides, we have a series of other partnerships with leading telcos all over the world, such as: Belgacom in Belgium, MTC in Russia, Netia in Poland, Oi in Brazil, SFR in France, SoftBank in Japan and ZON in Portugal. All of these are co-branded services, so Fon members know where they can connect for free. There are also many more partnerships in the pipeline, so stay tuned!
--- End quote ---
rsjsouza:
--- Quote from: Rick Law on May 31, 2021, 11:26:31 pm ---
--- Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on May 31, 2021, 05:47:27 pm ---It's easy to opt out of this. Open the Alexa app and go to Settings->Account Settings->Amazon Sidewalk and set the slider to Disabled.
--- End quote ---
The "Disabled" switch still leaves you with the choice of trusting that it actually is disabled as we define disabled, or merely operate in a way they can argue as "disabled".
--- End quote ---
Not only that, but in the future they can re-enable this feature silently after a firmware upgrade at the guise of "enhancing the functionality of the device".
Thanks but no thanks. Convenience is usually done at the expense of security. (I am so glad that my wife is on board with me on these matters)
madires:
--- Quote from: Ranayna on May 31, 2021, 08:58:36 pm ---For stuff like evidence purposes i can't see how it would matter how the data reaches Amazon's servers. That data is linked to the user id on that device.
--- End quote ---
My guess is that Sidewalk is similar to IoT protocols and the traffic is TLSed while forwarded by relays instead of a direct session. However, your CPE will be one end of the IP connection to Amazon. So Amazon will see the device's ID as well as your public IP address. And the IP address will be surely used for geolocation. When law enforcement asks Amazon about some criminal's data the data set will include your IP address. And since not all law enforcement officers are tech pundits, you might be able to see what will happen next.
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