Amazon Sidewalk will soon share your Internet with your neighbors

[rdl]

Just so you know, Amazon Sidewalk will soon share your Internet with your neighbors. If you use any Amazon devices you are opted in by default.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/amazon-devices-will-soon-automatically-share-your-internet-with-neighbors/


https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b?node=21328123011

[Ed.Kloonk]

Make it connect to the neighbors' internet. Fixt.

[themadhippy]

BT in the uk  were doing this some time ago under the name of openzone.

[Stray Electron]

  I read the article but this makes no sense what so ever.  First Amazon says that they're not charging for it. If true then why are they doing it? No, I don't believe that a company like Amazon ever does something that not going to directly benefit them!

    Second, they claim that this will increase my range. Really? Exactly how? Or has Amazon been deliberately crippling my service and now intends to restore it to it's full potential?

  Third, I understand the concept of allowing my neighbors to use my router when they have a service outage, but how does accessing my security cameras, my Ring door bell and my Alexa in any way useful to them?

   Until I learn a lot more about this, the answer is not only "No", it's "OH HELL NO!"

[Ranayna]

I have not looked up the details, but from a wireless technical standpoint, i would imagine, that all your Amazon wireless enabled devices will start broadcasting a signal themselves, instead of just being clients.
At the same time, any wireless Amazon Device can connect to this network, and will do so if another signal is stonger than you router. This can be, and very likely is, separated from non-Amazon devices on your network. Everything else would indeed be a security nightmare, and could not be hidden for long, resulting in a PR desaster.

So this could increase the coverage for your Amazon devices, because now they could connect to the Alexa your neighbor has sitting in the window near your garden, where your own wifi does not properly reach.

In theory, this sounds neat, but even in lighty populated areas with few Amazon Devices, you would get a lot of channel overlapping, potentially killing the performance of your WiFi.
Apparently this will be limited to low bandwith connections, but i would still expect a lot of "Air pollution" in the ISM bands.

Sound similar to how the new Apple Tags work. Any iPhone with "Find my location" enabled will be used to locate these tags. No matter to whom they belong.

[madires]

This reminds me of a few telcos who tried to turn their customer's CPEs into WiFi hotspots. Of course opt-out and not paying for resources, like power. Shitstorm in 3 - 2 - 1

[rsjsouza]

You will own nothing and will be happy
 

[tszaboo]

They will host internet. If your neighbors smart beer dispenser in the garden cannot to his wifi, but it can to yours, than it connects there. Same for your beer dispenser. Or any other smart device.
Yes, this is one of those technologies that can be pretty bad if not used correctly. We are beyond the point of no return, unless start mass burning of smart devices. But I like to adjust the white balance of my light.

[ConKbot]

The news if this getting hacked is going to to be glorious. Either "hackers steal list of x0 million Amazon customer Wi-Fi password..." or "security vulnerability in Alexa allows hacker outside your house to bypass Wi-Fi security and connect to your network"

[Ranayna]

@tszaboo: Your neighbors Amazon Device will not be able to directly connect to your WiFi. Without a big undiscovered security flaw (or bad configuration of your WiFi), that would simply be impossible without giving the neigbor your WiFi password.

What will happen will be similar to the following:
Your Amazon Device is of course connected to your WiFi. It needs that to work. To be more specific: It needs an always available connection to Amazon. Likely, it will use some kind of encrypted connection to establish this connection, and this connection will always be open. Some kind of VPN tunnel. How much traffic actually flows will be dependent on what the device is doing. While it is idle, there will not be much traffic, only keepalives (i am still here, are you still here?)

What the enabled Sidewalk will now do:
Your Sidewalk enabled device will send out a wireless signal. It can do that even without special hardware, by what is effectivly multiplexing it's own connection with the sidewalk network. That way there is no requirement for additional hardware. That is also already a likely reason for the relatively low bandwidth that Sidewalk provides: It must not affect the primary operation.
It is also very likely that any traffic coming in from the Sidewalk network will go directly into the established Amazon connection. At least that is how i would do that

With the info how it is advertised it is clear that you don't need to be afraid that your neighbor will be able to use his FireTV stick to stream 4K video using your internet connection.

That still does not make it better, but from a technical standpoint i find this quite intriguing. This can be made reasonably safe, but 100% safety does not exist. It is even understandable *why* the try this with opt-out: If it were opt-in, to many users would just be too lazy to enable it, not even starting with privacy issues. :p
But the way they are setting this up is bollocks. Apparently you can't even disable Sidewalk without installing an App.  Who knows what data that collects...

And considering metered home connections: I am always baffled when i hear that these are really a thing in the US. Even in germany, sometimes considered the home of crappy internet infrastructure, this has never taken on after the establishment of DSL. At least thats true for wired home connectiviy, dont't get me started on mobile internet 

[tszaboo]

@tszaboo: Your neighbors Amazon Device will not be able to directly connect to your WiFi. Without a big undiscovered security flaw (or bad configuration of your WiFi), that would simply be impossible without giving the neigbor your WiFi password.

Yes, you are 100% right. Connect to your wifi through an Alexa/Echo device sharing it, and acting like a gateway.

[Sal Ammoniac]

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.

[james_s]

It's ridiculous that you need to opt out, it should be opt in, but of course they know that almost nobody would do so. They are relying on most people being unaware of what is going on or too lazy to change the default setting.

[madires]

There's another important question. If a rogue device connects via Sidewalk and its traffic passes my CPE, will the police knock on my door or at Amazon's?

[Ranayna]

This is not a general internet connection that you could use to surf the web. This will only be usable to use *some* bare bones features of you Amazon Device. I suspect you can't really stream the video of your Ring camera at a paltry 80 KBit/s, but that is enough to still get alerts and the occasional compressed picture.

In addition to that, it would be tremendously stupid on Amazons part if the connection would actually terminate on the router of the Sidewalk providing device. That would be noticed *very* quickly. It is therefore very likely that any Sidewalk connected device will directly "piggyback" on the connection to Amazon.

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.

[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]

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.

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]

BT in the uk  were doing this some time ago under the name of openzone.

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/

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!

[rsjsouza]

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.

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".

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]

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.

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.

[Rick Law]

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.

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".

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)

[RL: bold added]

Future is already here and worst - it doesn't even require any firmware upgrade, it just turned itself back to enabled.  Smart devices know better, they know you really don't mean it and even if you do, they doesn't care...

This is what I found on Reddit:  "PSA: I've now opted out of Amazon Sidewalk three times... ...I opted out when it first was announced. I opted out again a few weeks later. And I just opted out again a moment ago. The 'enable' toggle keeps going to enable. Shocking."

Others reported similar behavior.

^{https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/nnugs0/psa_ive_now_opted_out_of_amazon_sidewalk_three/}

I think in part it is the impact of Smart Phones.  The "smart consumers" have their phones net-enabled already.  So they skipped out of paying for a home ISP connection.  This is the IoT device makers/sellers' way of expanding their market to the phone-only consumers: let those who has it shares, most wont know they are sharing anyway.  So who cares - we "make it so" whether they wanted to share or not.

[graybeard]

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.

You should not have to opt-out.  My 94 year old mother has an Alexa device my cousin set up for her several years ago.  I need to go to her house and do a hard reset (if possible) or trash it.

[Cubdriver]

And this is why I don't have any Amazon devices...

-Pat

[DrG]

But Sidewalk is also a vast new wireless network entirely controlled by Amazon — and paid for by us......Which raises the question: Shouldn’t Amazon be paying us? https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/07/amazon-sidewalk-network/

Amazon Sidewalk Privacy and Security Whitepaper (pdf) https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/sidewalk/final_privacy_security_whitepaper.pdf

So many red flags and so little benefit and such a goldmine for NOT you.