Amazon Started Sharing Your Internet Connection

[Chris]

I don't have any Amazon devices but would be concerned if I did with this high-handed approach that Amazon took with consumers' devices. Only more evidence that Big Tech feel that they "run tings".

https://www.iclarified.com/81315/ama...to-turn-it-off

[psilos]

The only mistake you made was assuming that the devices are "consumers' devices" as in owned by the consumer. Most items sold nowadays are basically rentals of a service but the consumer pays the upfront price of the device required for the service.

If the vendor stops supporting the service the device essentially becomes a brick. Amazon is just basically making their "services" work better by using resources in the vicinity.

From a technical standpoint the idea is brilliant and somewhat similar to Bittorrent by using unused bandwidth and allowing the users to share to benefit everyon within the ecosystem.

From a privacy and consumer rights standpoint they will escape again because they let everyone know what they are doing and likely you will agree to some User Agreement without taking time to notice and just clicking accept as well as allowing you turn it off if you don't want to participate.

I don't think anyone has tried this before but if it works out this sort of thing is going to be the standard going forward.

Consumers really need to start paying attention to what they are buying and agreeing to.

Back in the day everyone used to have an iPod and thought it was a portable MP3 player, load it up with songs and have music on the go. In reality it was actually a portable iTunes library. You couldn't just hook it up to your friends computer and copy a song as the song needed to be added to your library instead.

This same dumb device thing (now called IoT) is only going to proliferate with all these cloud services except that devices are going to cost a lot of money and be bricks when services cease e.g. Sonos speakers

[Chris]

The only mistake you made was assuming that the devices are "consumers' devices" as in owned by the consumer. Most items sold nowadays are basically rentals of a service but the consumer pays the upfront price of the device required for the service.

Indeed, we pay full-price for the privilege of using devices that Big Tech have full control over.

[Falcon1986]

I don't have any Amazon devices but would be concerned if I did with this high-handed approach that Amazon took with consumers' devices. Only more evidence that Big Tech feel that they "run tings".

https://www.iclarified.com/81315/ama...to-turn-it-off

I have some Amazon Echos and went to turn Sidewalk off through the Alexa App when I first learned about it. But it wasn't there. Seems like it might be a regional thing or something that hasn't been rolled out yet to devices in our region.

[owen]

I saw this and thought "yup, a good way to set up skynet". Its the natural path of these connected devices that you rent from these companies.