So, Amazon is doing a thing… and you should probably know about it.
Late last month, the company that normalized the unfair expectation of free two-day shipping (but also destroyed your favorite mom and pop retailer) officially rolled out the beginnings of its lofty networking project known as “Amazon Sidewalk.” First announced in 2019, Amazon’s project essentially hopes to create a low-bandwidth network around your neighborhood (like the sidewalk).
We’re not entirely sure why you necessarily need this right now, but Amazon says that “Amazon Sidewalk helps your devices get connected and stay connected.” The company also states that Amazon Sidewalk could eventually help you maintain connectivity to outdoor devices, like your garage openers and locks, as well as location-oriented devices, such as pet locators or key trackers — extending beyond the range of your home network. No word on when those features may be available, though.
But Amazon isn’t doing this without a little bit of help. A lot of help, actually. Amazon Sidewalk is a shared network created from many of the Echo and Ring devices that already exist within your home network. If you have an Amazon Alexa account, you’ve probably received an email detailing all this information.
But for the millions of sociopaths with 22,876 unread emails sitting in their inboxes, here’s a brief reminder: Amazon is using your Alexa-enabled and Ring devices (which you purchased with your own money) to siphon a tiny (and probably unnoticeable, if we’re being honest) bit of your home’s Wi-Fi bandwidth (again, your money) to create its neighborhood network. This network will allow out-of-range networking devices to remain connected, but won’t provide enough juice for your neighbors to do much of anything with your Wi-Fi alone.
Naturally, the more devices and home networks that have the feature activated, the better the network will be.
Here’s the thing about that last statement, though: You’re not actually activating anything yourself. The decision has been made for you, with Amazon enabling that feature on all of your eligible devices without so much as asking you if you think it’s a good idea. (Or maybe they did, but who actually has the time to read user agreements?)
Disabling Amazon Sidewalk
It’s not all bad news, though. While Amazon doesn’t necessarily ask you if you want to participate, the company does give you the opportunity to opt out.
Here’s a quick rundown on how you get that done:
Download and install the Amazon Alexa app on your mobile device
Launch the app and create an account (if you haven’t already)
From the app’s home screen, tap More
Tap Settings>Account Settings>Amazon Sidewalk
Tap the toggle button next to Enabled and verify that it changes to Disabled
And now for those who prefer five-step instructions in video form:
Be sure to check in on mom and dad though. There’s a good chance they won’t have any idea that anything is even happening with that Echo smart speaker you got them last Christmas.
That, unfortunately, is likely a foundational piece in Amazon’s Sidewalk potential success. Though you may be informed enough to take greater control of your network, most consumers aren’t and won’t. That’s kind of the name of the game with opt-out policies — companies are either banking on you being too busy to notice, or too indifferent to do anything about it. It’s the same reason your neighboring Wi-Fi networks still carry their default names like “ATT8pf5Kln” and “8AFxNJK” and not something clever like “PrettyFlyForAWiFi” or “SilenceOfTheLANs.”
Most people just don’t care. Or they’re too old. Sometimes it’s a little bit of both.
Privacy and Security
But, for the sake of the conversation, let’s say you actually want to participate in Amazon’s big plans for a neighborhood network. Perhaps you’d care to know about how Amazon is securing your data and protecting your privacy.
“Amazon has carefully designed privacy protections into how Sidewalk collects, stores, and uses metadata,” the company states. “Sidewalk protects customer privacy by limiting the amount and type of metadata that Amazon needs to receive from Sidewalk endpoints to manage the network. For example, Sidewalkneeds to know an endpoint’s Sidewalk-ID to authenticate the endpoint before allowing the gateway to route the endpoint’s packets on the network. Sidewalk also tracks a gateway’s usage to ensure bandwidth caps are not exceeded and latency is minimized on a customer’s private network.Information customers would deem sensitive, like the contents of a packet sent over the Sidewalk network, is not seen by Sidewalk.”
For a closer look at all that Amazon has to say about Sidewalk’s privacy and security features, you can read over its 13-page whitepaper here (sorry, friends — no video format this time).
So what do you think? Are you OK with Amazon using your devices to create a neighborhood network for marginally beneficial reasons? Let us know in the comments below.
