Amazon Sidewalk Shares a Slice of your Internet Bandwidth

I was looking at our Cybersecurity update at work today and I came across Amazon Sidewalk. I saw one person mention it once on here. For your situational awareness, It went into effect June 8th

On June 8, the Web host merchant and entertainment behemoth automatically enrolled Alexa, Echo, or many other Amazon devices into Amazon Sidewalk. The new wireless mesh service will share a small slice of your Internet bandwidth with neighboring Sidewalk-capable devices that don’t have connectivity. Sidewalk will also help your Amazon devices with bandwidth from other Sidewalk users when you don’t have a connection.

By default, a variety of Amazon devices will enroll in the system come June 8 and only a tiny fraction of people know to take the time to change default settings. This means that millions of people will be co-opted into the program, whether they know anything about it or not.

Amazon states that Sidewalk “is currently only available in the US.”

The full list of devices that can act as Sidewalk bridges is Ring Floodlight Cam (2019), Ring Spotlight Cam Wired (2019), Ring Spotlight Cam Mount (2019), Echo (3rd gen and newer), Echo Dot (3rd gen and newer), Echo Dot for Kids (3rd gen and newer), Echo Dot with Clock (3rd gen and newer), Echo Plus (all generations), Echo Show (all models and generations), Echo Spot, Echo Studio, Echo Input, and Echo Flex.

Ways to Protect Yourself · Turn off Amazon Sidewalk · Open the Alexa mobile app. · Go to “More” in the bottom right corner. · Navigate to Settings > Account Settings and tap Amazon Sidewalk. · Scroll to the bottom of the Amazon Sidewalk page and tap the toggle bar to turn off the feature

From Amazon “the sidewalk server is 80Kbps…Monthly data used by Sidewalk, per account, is capped at 500MB”

The more you know…

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Sounds like they’re trying to compete against apples find my network

I chose way#2. Get rid of Amazon tech. My house has been an Amazon free zone for almost 2 years now. I guess my poor neighbors will just have to suffer if they have bad WiFi. :man_shrugging:

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I remember when Comcast did this with xfinity WiFi. Except it was worse, they were sectioning off paying customers’ bandwidth to other people who only needed a Comcast username and password to use the service.

They still make you opt out of this garbage to this day. Of course the workaround is to not use their devices (modem) and use your own instead. No opt out needed.

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@DastardlyMuffin
It would be different if they offered a discount or something… For me, I wouldn’t want any unknown entity having access to my network. But the average Jim and Jane just want their Facebook and Netflix to work. You offer a $5/mo credit, many I bet would jump on it immediately.

Though knowing Comcast… they would probably bump the base price $8 for every customer to compensate for a $5 discount to a few customers. :roll_eyes:

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I never really used amazon

I use ebay more than I use amazon and I hate ebay

Honestly

The internet is a joke

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