Security News > 2021 > June > Deadline draws near to avoid auto-joining Amazon's mesh network Sidewalk

Owners of Amazon Echo assistants and Ring doorbells have until June 8 to avoid automatically opting into Sidewalk, the internet giant's mesh network that taps into people's broadband and may prove to be a privacy nightmare.

The idea is that if your internet connection goes down or is interrupted, your Amazon smart home devices will still be able to communicate with the outside world, and send out alerts or take instructions, by wirelessly connecting to neighbors' Sidewalk-compatible gadgets and using their internet connection instead. These Sidewalk gizmos communicate with one another using Bluetooth Low Energy over short distances and 900MHz LoRa over longer ranges, and use Wi-Fi to reach the public internet and Amazon's backend servers.

Amazon hopes Sidewalk will create a large ad-hoc network that covers swathes of the US to help people easily locate lost pets and belongings, improve connectivity for Ring home security devices and Echo-powered applications, and so on.

Clearly Amazon wants its mesh to be cast as wide as possible, and so from June 8, its Sidewalk-capable devices will be opted into the network by default, and Tile compatibility will follow on June 14.

"The new mesh network raises a wide array of concerns about how users' data is potentially exposed to other device owners. Also, if Amazon is successful in expanding this mesh network, it could raise huge antitrust concerns, creating a parallel internet from countless Internet-of-Things devices. This risks giving one of the world's worst monopolists control over not just our devices, but the internet itself."

Rather than wait for the Tile to go in and out of range of someone with the Tile app on their phone, during which it can report its whereabouts, with Amazon's Sidewalk in full effect, the Tile can be tracked anywhere and anytime it goes near a participating Echo or Ring device, at the very least.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/06/02/amazon_sidewalk_mesh/