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Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

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're building, and the kind of customer blow-back they will enable by optimizing for $$$ under the guise of "making things easier".

Side question: what problem does Amazon thinks this solves? Bad connectivity experiences for Ring users?

Edit: changed the link to a better guide linked elsewhere in the thread

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Missed a step in that opt-out how-to: 1. Install Alexa App on phone.

Why can't I disable this 'account setting' from the Amazon web portal. Plus, if I mistrust Amazon's repurposing of devices, why would I want an Alexa app installed to potentially repurpose my phone? Funnily enough, Sidewalk was just one of 3 surprising anti-security/anti-privacy settings available only in the app.

"Why would I want an Alexa app installed to potentially repurpose my phone?"

You wouldn't. However if you were ambivalent and did not care one way or the other, or unaware of the change, then of course you would not bother to opt-out. This is no doubt Amazon's strategy. And when you opt-out you are forced to install an app that may well have worse consequences than Sidewalk.

This strategy, so often used by "tech" companies, seems to take inspiration from direct mail.1 I have a well-educated friend who, many years ago, found himself working for a direct mail company early in his career. He did not stay long. The people he worked for sounded like dregs, and I think he had a crisis of conscience. Today, ethical standards seem to have fallen. Interesting how the word "hustle", as in "side hustle", has been repurposed by young people as something supposedly respectable. Usually that word implies some sort of con or other underhanded activity.2

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_mail

2. echo -e 'DEFINE all hustle\nQUIT\n'|nc -vvn 199.48.130.6 2628|tr -cd '\12\40-\176'|less

> "side hustle", has been repurposed by young people as something supposedly respectable

I think it's more redefined as something necessary, as the number of good jobs for young people have been on a continuous downward trend for decades all over the world.

"extend the low-bandwidth working range of devices to help find pets or valuables with Tile trackers, and help devices stay online even if they are outside the range of their home wifi"

Seems like a genuine customer problem. If you want to set up smart lights through your back yard, or a smart sensor at the edge of your driver, they might not have WiFi connectivity to the rest of your house.

Hence the Sidewalk metaphor - a mesh network allows the devices to hop access from one another.

There is also a pretty detailed Privacy/Security Whitepaper and it's important to point out this before any alarmist "Amazon is spying on you!" pearl clutching: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/sidewalk/final_privac...

> Seems like a genuine customer problem. If you want to set up smart lights through your back yard, or a smart sensor at the edge of your driver, they might not have WiFi connectivity to the rest of your house.

That sounds like a "you" problem, not a "me" problem. If "you" are setting up smart devices where "you" don't have connectivity, "you" should provide the connectivity, not "me". (Note: I don't have a problem with devices piggy backing on/extending their owner's network).

TFA mentions possible issues with FTC and TOS violations with customers' ISPs. But what about overages? Who's liable for those? Is there going to be a metered breakdown of network usage? Will AMZN cover costs of overages due to neighbor usage? What about potential liability issues? Infosec issues?

This just sounds like a too easy setup for a class action lawsuit.

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.

> It’s a network to talk to AWS IoT API

Except Alexa is extensible, so you can't draw any kind of barrier around what's actually being done using that network.

And IoT has a flawless record of security. There's no way someone could find a vulnerability in a device connected to a sidewalk network. Oh... wait.

The IoT devices are exactly the ones I don't want on the 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?

Can Apple devices use your mobile data to participate in the FindMy network? This seems like a weird line to draw.

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 =)

> They can get online via any apple device.

Airtags don’t “get online.” Apple devices take note of the Airtag’s identifying characteristics (I don’t know how this is defined) and report back to Apple having been in proximity to them. They are “dumb” with respect to the internet. Just Bluetooth beacons.

Isn't that effectively the same thing, though? The airtags are useful because they cause other people's devices to transmit their location.

Apple sells this as a feature on new phones (which people implicitly associate as a communications device). Lights and doorbells are supposed to be dumb devices, not network gateways for the general public.

It would be like Ford announcing that they had been putting USB ports in the bumper of every car for the last 5 years, and starting today you can walk up to any random persons car and charge your phone.

So you're saying the doorbell that uses machine learning to detect people and objects and the send me videos of them is a dumb device? I'd love to see a smart one!

Ahh, thank you for the correction.

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

This is the crux of the issue. I have spent a lot of my adult life in places that would horrify the average westerner. The root of the problem in recognizing what could go wrong with this stuff, is never having been exposed to a jurisdiction of political power which is run by murderous psychopaths outside a rule of law that benefits anyone but the psychopaths. Of course "authorities" will always continue to push boundaries and seek to embiggen the largesse of their power, but we in the developed world are so lucky! Most of us here on HN have won some sort of cosmic lottery with odds more infinitesimal than any other lottery that could ever exist. But an unfortunate side effect of never having been exposed to the various hazards of human civilization that almost every other human before us has endured, is not having built up any "ideological antibodies" against these sorts of things.

I've seen comments on Youtube that seemed shocked that Youtube could trace comments to an IP address! We are deep in it now, approaching a point where the barrier to entry to understand how the technology functions is too much even for capable specialists to fully comprehend the rampant abuse happening at this very moment. How often do we as technical people find out about some new god damned thing some god damned tech company is doing to steal our data or otherwise exploit us as "customers"? And even people who are technically capable of grasping the depth of the power of this technology are still busy hammering away on their keyboards to make it more powerful, having never had to worry about violent psychopaths with political power. We are creating a truly terrifying nightmare of brutal suffering for our grandchildren or their children.

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.

"You can help me, I can help you". My smart lights work where I don't have connectivity, but you do, and your tile tracker works where you don't have connectivity, but I do.

It's really quite similar to Apple's Find My network.

I just wish this was going to some open collective where everyone could benefit, rather than just Amazon customers...

Helium is exactly what you describe. People deploy APs that provide coverage and in turn get fractions of pennies for transferring data from random peoples devices.

https://www.helium.com/

I've seen this and it looks interesting. A true offline mesh large-scale network would probably not be feasible, so some kind of authority would be required. And crypto does seem to work for that to keep it decentralized, but I'm not sure I like their implementation. I've got a few LoRa radio kits and Raspberry Pis, but am not allowed to setup my own node. Rather I have to purchase one from them.

Apple's Find My network is far far more limited in scope

I think the real value is for the devices that can move, such as that Tile. You have practical way of ensuring they don't move into a dead spot, and for trackers no way to ensure they don't go beyond range.

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 performance in my area and the impact to the quality of other delivery carriers in my area, Amazon is not afraid to engage in a race to the bottom in the name of market share and profits. Opting me in to Sidewalk will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and sends me to anyone else except for Amazon when shopping.

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.

> retroactively being turned into yet another internet surveillance device.

Oh, and an ad-delivery mechanism. Ask Alexa to set a timer, and sometimes she'll rebut with "while you wait why not try Amazon Music!" It's absolutely infuriating.

I emailed jeff@amazon.com (VIP support team) and they confirmed it could not be disabled by normal means. They disabled it on their end but then had to do it again when somehow it got unset.

The "start with the customer and work backward" mantra that used to be strong in the company is now completely ignored for Alexa it seems. The first domino has fallen. I suspect we'll see many more fall as a result.

I have never heard anything like an ad on my Echo. If I ask it to set a timer, it does, and then sounds the alarm x minutes later. Nothing else. If the kids ask it to play a song, it plays that song. If they ask it for an animal fact, they get one. Nothing else. Did I toggle something at setup?

She will sometimes tell you about features related to whatever you asked of her--and sometimes those are paid things she's talking about. For example, playing songs at the tier that comes with Prime and she might talk about Amazon Music.

I can't recall mine ever doing that. We use it mostly with Spotify. No Prime and not in the US, so that might mean that we miss those things.

If one of the kids botches a request, it might suggest something they could ask, but it's always basic stuff.

With all due respect, it’s a microphone connected to the internet that you are meant to install in your home. How are you surprised to see it used as a surveillance device?

no no no, you should not expect people to behave badly.

I agree with the sentiment that it is a crying shame this technology could be used to help people for whom keyboards become complicated but instead it's used to trick them.

> no no no, you should not expect people to behave badly

Should you not?

There’s a bit of a spectrum of that. On one end of the spectrum, we all leave our front doors unlocked and our car keys in our parked cars in case someone is stranded and needs to borrow our car. Most of us don’t do that, but that’s what a truly high trust society looks like.

I think it’s prudent to expect any large tech company to violate our privacy to exactly the degree they are physically capable of. It doesn’t mean we should morally approve of them living down to our low expectations of them, any more than we should morally approve of burglars and car thieves exploiting the naivety of people who think they don’t need to lock up their homes and vehicles.

And yes, it is a crying shame that we live in a low-trust world.

> you should not expect people to behave badly

I've never been disappointed expecting people to behave quite badly.

>no no no, you should not expect people to behave badly

you should not excuse people behaving badly because it is to be expected.

if you want to be able to protect against people behaving badly you should learn to expect it of them, expectation of bad behavior enables preparation.

Corporate greed tends to do that to people. Younger people are surprised how cynical I am, but IMHO that's just my experience.

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

> and sends me to anyone else except for Amazon when shopping

I cancelled Prime last year so have been shopping around more...I've consistently been able to find cheaper prices elsewhere with free 2 day shipping.

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.

Tax evasion, worker abuses, and anti-unionization all happen far away from me and require some kind of SJW attitude to motivate change. I don’t see these things, they don’t impact me directly, so it’s no wonder they don’t factor into my decision making as much as things things that are actually happening in my home.

Alexa advertising to me, becoming a nuisance, and coopting my internet connection all happen close to me.

I ordered two HomePod Minis to replace the Echo Dots in my home yesterday. Amazon will no longer have a foothold in my home, and won’t have visibility into my shopping list or other usage.

Do the parents understand that spying on people is how the industry makes money? Surely, "the industry" would not spy on people without a "business" reason. There seeems to be a belief by every participant in "the industry" that they must learn things about users and they should not always have to ask permission to gather such information.

Sometimes people on HN try to analogise to something like a retail industry where a customer can be observed through their purchases. However there is a major difference. The purchase. That is the ultimate goal of the retailer attained. A purchase. The retail business is not some honeypot to gather information on people. It is trying to make sales. Users of "free" internet-connected products and services generally do not make purchases from the provider of those products/services. They are not fulfilling the goal of the business: to make money. Thus, the company must find paying customers somewhere else.

Particularly amusing is the oft-used "justification" of [we spy on you] "to make our ["free"] products and services better." Sometimes participants in "the industry" suggest they are trying to make products and services better for users. Other times it less clear exactly who the improvements are (purportedly) intended to benefit. Of course the ultimate goal, because this "industry" of spying is considered by them as a "business", is to make things better for paying customers. If they fail to collect information from users, they do not make money and the "business" fails. Even non-profits supported by deals with advertising companies feel compelled to conduct "telemetry". Not learning about users is deemed unacceptable.

"Spy or die".

> 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.

It's the same thing Apple is doing. They want every device to be a part of a low-power BLE network for Apple AirTags or Amazon Echo Tiles or whatever they are. They want a huge network so that these small low power devices can use everyones devices to connect to the internet.

For what it's worth, the only way to Opt-Out from Apple's broad network like this is to disable all "Find My" network tracking, so you'll never be able to remote control your own phone using its standard radios if you wish to disable the tag network stuff.

To be honest, I find these ad hoc mobile mesh networks fascinating.

With cheap flash, we could do a lot of high-latency high-bandwidth data transport with just existing movements.

We could eliminate telecoms overnight but we just don’t have the organization to do it. Like, every house used to have a VHF/UHF receiving tower on it.

Does it not also introduce the possibility of introducing possible vulnerabilities by sharing connections? I generally have a pretty good idea of what I’m doing on a network, but now my neighbor might be up to no good on my network and that seems like it would be a potentially big problem.

Depends how it’s structured. At best, you’re like a TOR relay and have no real idea of what’s going in or out.

But if you act like an exit node, you could be screwed if you live in a place where an IP is enough to be found guilty and nobody runs a public wifi. But you can always tunnel your outside traffic out over TOR.

A content “delivery” network running on human movements. Now that’d be an interesting routing problem.

Hah. Well, humans have easily predictable movement patterns right? Home, work, grocery store.

Imagine wanting to move data from city A to city B, so they'd decide to do a Tinder match of a girl from City B to this guy from City A, so he'd visit her a lot and be the data conduit...

This is a terrific idea for a short story.

I think "unwitting mule" is something been happening for thousands of years, just with different tools.

Not just human movements, but any movements. In Northern Canada, we have tons of fly-in communities that exclusively use satellite internet.

And few good opportunities for caching either.

Would be cool to have a seamless system where you put in your Netflix request and a couple days later, the shows arrive because the aircraft has a Pi loaded with SD cards on it and boots at ground level.

They'd just mail you dvds instead.

This is what netflix used to do.

They still do: https://dvd.netflix.com/

In USA.

There are tons of cellular network antennas hidden atop buildings in regular urban environments. Thankfully, in the current paradigm, telcos pay rent to put down these antennas and occupy the space.

The idea of a mesh network is not what concerns most people. It’s the idea that devices from Amazon connect to it automatically and can do whatever they want with it.

The canonical anti-example is this: You buy a smart TV, but don’t give it your WiFi password. No problem, it connects to any Amazon device whether in your house or next door, and now it can sell information about what you watch, how many people its camera can see are in the room, words you say aloud in its presence, &c.

At the engineering level, Apple’s mesh looks like Amazon’s mesh in exactly the same way that at the engineering level, an iPhone looks a lot like a high-end Android phone. What’s different between them is what Amazon uses its mesh network for, just as what’s different between an iPhone and an Android phone is what Google uses its access to your devices for.

Apple obstructs adtech and tracking. Google builds its business on adtech and tracking. Apple uses its mesh network to find items. People fear that Amazon will use its mesh network to spy on you in the name of revenue.

> People fear that Amazon will use its mesh network to spy on you in the name of revenue.

Amazon's track record with privacy and security is much more Apple-esque than Google-esque

Amazon's Ad business is a monster that is growing faster and faster [1] so they'll want to track and absorb as much data as possible. FireTV is one of the noisiest devices in my home, second only to Roku, constantly phoning home.

Selling access to a mesh network to other providers will become an additional source of recurring revenue from what would have otherwise been one time revenue source (hardware sale).

It will be no different than Amazon competing w/ FedEx and UPS using it's delivery engine

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/29/amazons-ads-business-nears-7...

> the only way to Opt-Out from Apple's broad network like this is to disable all "Find My" network tracking,

Not true. I just checked on my own phone, and the toggles for "Find My iPhone" and "Find My network" are separate. Disabling the latter only warns you you can't locate your phone "even if it's offline", i.e. if the "standard radio" is off.

it doesn't seem like the same thing to me at all, one is a very targeted "find a device" api/network that does nothing except allow airtags to send an encrypted "here i am" to a airtag owner while the amazon sidewalk network is "open to everyone and anyone to send anything" - what happens when someone co-ops it as a proxy for hacking? 80kps is enough for an ssh session. It's basically like having a slow unprotected wifi network piggybacking off your connection.

> what problem does Amazon thinks this solves?

A busybody, myopic, minor corporate executive wanting to implement a known technique for more career growth. (See Comcast, Apple, et al.)

> what problem does Amazon thinks this solves? Bad connectivity experiences for Ring users?

I wrote my guess elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27358758

tl;dr Amazon will resell access to Sidewalk to device manufacturers, allowing them to cost-effectively bridge the "telemetry gap".

No bones about it, this is Amazon's response to

> If you don't want your smart tv to spy on you, then don't give it your wifi password.

How's does it stand legally stealing people's Internet connection and selling it to people who don't have the password.

Legally, every Amazon device user agreed to a TOS that lets Amazon do whatever they want and change at any time.

So we’re kind of lucky they at least announced it as they could have just turned it on and opted everyone in.

Point this logic at the Tile network or Apple’s FindMy network. Does it still work?

"the street finds its own uses for things" (Gibson) is rapidly becoming "the wall street finds its own uses for things"

100% this. as a device maker, sidewalk is a potential game changer for low power connectivity and finally a path to lorawan finding wide spread adoption

except that, unlike ble, lora lives on bands that are not the same world wide - there is no region 3 ISM band - here in NZ the US ISM band is right in the middle of one of my cell phone company's bands

this is true but in practice it's not a big deal. Companies don't usually do a single sku for the whole world especially with the certification requirements.

I (pre-covid) visit the US a lot and often bring stuff back. I'm used to turning off/switching the US-DECT/etc when required but in this case Amazon has snuck extra functionality into my home without my knowledge.

Of course when the radio inspector comes knocking on my door because Amazon has loaded the wrong firmware into my box (without my knowledge) it's me who's breaking the law, not Amazon

this is already the case. certifications for 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi have different requirements between the US and EU. Often in the EU companies have to lower the peak power.

I don't like the idea of my neighbors piggybacking off my data and power hookups. Why aren't device manufactures figuring out how to make things that don't require something like sidewalk to exist?

It's not that difficult to run cable and use power over ethernet.

the key use case for sidewalk is away from your home. Ethernet doesn't fix this. Presently cellular is the only real solution.

Okay so every device comes with cellular radios which talk to the same IoT API. Does anything really change for you?

Yes, I'm not paying for your infrastructure. Isn't this what 5G is supposed to be used for?

The Sidewalk network has a very low bandwidth of 80kbps with a cap of 500 MB per month. I doubt that it will incur extra cost for most people. Is your concern about the principle of sharing bandwidth or are you worried about the actual cost?

If it is that cheap, why doesn't Amazon do a deal with the power company to hang an Alexa off every power pole to build their network?

I'm sure it would be no big deal if I just took a few cents from you and all your family members every day to buy my coffee each day?

Product managers do understand, and they do recognize, but they are not making the decisions, and they are powerless to do anything about it. Like any major company, when employee doesn’t want to do something, they will find someone who will.

Can't we have a strong consumer organization which can actually enforce that companies are not building stuff that works against the consumer?

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

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