Ehhh.... Your neighbors won't mind...

[Rocketdog2112]

Evidently now, my WIFI is your WIFI. It has been revealed that Amazon has the ability to keep your Amazon Echo or Ring cameras active if your in home internet goes down by simply tapping into your neighbors Echo or Ring devices and sharing their internet bandwidth with you. It is a default service (with an Opt out option) included in their products named Amazon Sidewalk. Amazon is evidently not forthcoming about security details, and...  you will never know what other local Sidewalk devices are connected to your devices. Theory is that eventually "Amazon is building the infrastructure to monitor us all."

 

https://gizmodo.com/you-need-to-opt-out-of-amazon-sidewalk-1845750268

[wall03]

4 minutes ago, Rocketdog2112 said:

https://gizmodo.com/you-need-to-opt-out-of-amazon-sidewalk-1845750268

thats disgusting amazon

[Ruffleduffle]

3 minutes ago, wall03 said:

thats disgusting amazon

and again i feel good about not using any digital assistant integrated stuff. My smartphone spies on me enough already

[aDoomGuy]

lol

 

Now our doorbells start to hack our neighbors wifi...? Sometimes I wonder what's next. This is one of those times.

 

9 minutes ago, Ruffleduffle said:

and again i feel good about not using any digital assistant integrated stuff. My smartphone spies on me enough already

My sentiment exactly.

[Ruffleduffle]

1 minute ago, aDoomGuy said:

lol

 

Now our doorbells start to hack our neighbors wifi...? Sometimes I wonder what's next. This is one of those times.

 

My sentiment exactly.

yeh i dont need big corporations having a direct video and audio feed from my house. If i get a security system or any smart home stuff, it will have to be locally stored and contained

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to General Discussion

[lexusgamer05]

This should be an opt-in solution which would need all parties to agree.

[wkdpaul]

Just looked and that feature isn't available on my Ring camera or Echo device. I'm guessing it depends on location.

[Ruffleduffle]

1 minute ago, wkdpaul said:

Just looked and that feature isn't available on my Ring camera or Echo device. I'm guessing it depends on location.

i would guess, since in germany i believe you cant use anything to record audio or video of a public area from your private property, so it is fairly hard to setup video surveillance and video doorbells that can record 

[Trik'Stari]

The real question is whether or not Ring is still giving unfettered access to law enforcement without a warrant. That was a thing a while back, I don't know if they ever stopped.

[pythonmegapixel]

4 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

Just looked and that feature isn't available on my Ring camera or Echo device. I'm guessing it depends on location.

The linked article makes a brief mention a few lines down that it's only available in the US, and your profile seems to indicate you're in Canada, which probably explains it.

[Ruffleduffle]

1 minute ago, Trik'Stari said:

The real question is whether or not Ring is still giving unfettered access to law enforcement without a warrant. That was a thing a while back, I don't know if they ever stopped.

also does anyone believe amazon that they have stopped listening to audio recorded on echo devices to "improve the service"?

[whm1974]

5 hours ago, Ruffleduffle said:

yeh i dont need big corporations having a direct video and audio feed from my house. If i get a security system or any smart home stuff, it will have to be locally stored and contained

Indeed. We can take an older Notebook, Single Board Computers(SBC), the Raspberry Pi 400 and use that as a Control System for your own stuff.

[Ruffleduffle]

9 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

Indeed. We can take an older Notebook, Single Board Computers(SBC), the Raspberry Pi 400 and use that as a Control System for your own stuff.

there are prebuilt systems that just use a local server and record to a nas

[Rocketdog2112]

I just don't understand how it can bypass your router and other protocols such as passwords? Hell, it used to frustrate the crap out of me the time spent just setting up a wifi or bluetooth device!

[TetraSky]

Sounds like something that could potentially be open for abuse.

 

 

3 minutes ago, Rocketdog2112 said:

I just don't understand how it can bypass your router and other protocols such as passwords? Hell, it used to frustrate the crap out of me the time spent just setting up a wifi or bluetooth device!

If it connects to other Amazon devices around it, it doesn't need to go through your router, it goes through the device that's already on the network to access the internet.

It would be as if you were sharing your network on an open wifi network that's "only available" for amazon devices, the moment you had such device on your network.

 

[pythonmegapixel]

2 minutes ago, Rocketdog2112 said:

I just don't understand how it can bypass your router and other protocols such as passwords? Hell, it used to frustrate the crap out of me the time spent just setting up a wifi or bluetooth device!

It knows the password and other network details... you have to type it when you set up the device.

However, it might well not actually be sending passwords, but rather just creating a second Wi-fi hotspot which is bridged to the other. Kinda like when you set up a virtual machine with a virtual network card. Or when you create a Wi-fi hotspot on your phone which shares your LTE connection.

[j.son19]

I find it sick how you have to update the alexa app to even turn it off :

Quote

To disable the feature, you have to update the Alexa app to its latest version. Once you’ve done that, sign into your Amazon account, then tap More > Settings > Account Settings > Amazon Sidewalk. Once there, do yourself a favor and turn that shit off.

 

 

[PonyBoyZ_]

yeah fuck this im going off the grid when funds allow 

[The_russian]

The whole reason for the feature seems flawed to me, how often does your internet go out without your neighbor's also going out? Maybe other people's modem or routers act up frequently resulting in losing interest access, but the only time I lose internet connectivity is when the ISP has an outage, and that affects the whole surrounding area so this feature would be useless. This should be an opt-in feature, not a feature enabled by default that you have to dig through settings to opt-out of, but that seems to be a trend these days when adding questionable features. 

[Letgomyleghoe]

51 minutes ago, Rocketdog2112 said:

I just don't understand how it can bypass your router and other protocols such as passwords? Hell, it used to frustrate the crap out of me the time spent just setting up a wifi or bluetooth device!

it doesn't the other device is already connected to wifi, so therefore, the only thing that needs to connect together is the google pod or alexa, which are controlled by amazon.

[Lurick]

1 minute ago, The_russian said:

The whole reason for the feature seems flawed to me, how often does your internet go out without your neighbor's also going out? Maybe other people's modem or routers act up frequently resulting in losing interest access, but the only time I lose internet connectivity is when the ISP has an outage, and that affects the whole surrounding area so this feature would be useless. This should be an opt-in feature, not a feature enabled by default that you have to dig through settings to opt-out of, but that seems to be a trend these days when adding questionable features. 

This is what's got me stumped, it's almost never that just your connection goes down unless someone cuts a cable or something that only impacts you so it's got to be pretty close to home. Additionally you've got to be in close proximity to the Amazon devices to get good signal too unless they're creating a really large mesh network but I don't believe they've got really good antennas on them as is so if you're on like an acre or two of land good luck bridging to another Echo or something at distance.

[Letgomyleghoe]

7 minutes ago, The_russian said:

The whole reason for the feature seems flawed to me, how often does your internet go out without your neighbor's also going out? Maybe other people's modem or routers act up frequently resulting in losing interest access, but the only time I lose internet connectivity is when the ISP has an outage, and that affects the whole surrounding area so this feature would be useless. This should be an opt-in feature, not a feature enabled by default that you have to dig through settings to opt-out of, but that seems to be a trend these days when adding questionable features. 

sometimes neighborhoods have multiple different isp's 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

So does that mean I can use my Echo to mess with my neighbors through their Echos? Can't wait for someone to do stuff like this:

 

[Lurick]

Just now, Letgomyleghoe said:

sometimes neighborhoods have multiple different isp's 

Even then it's usually, at least for me, power outages which take out internet or region wide issues which aren't going to be limited to a single ISP. Sure a single ISP in an area could have an outage but it's usually pretty slim that it will impact just one company in an area compared to other things which would cause more generalized outages.