Amazon announced the Sidewalk app over a year ago. The company claimed that the new app will solve users’ problems with their low-power, low-bandwidth devices.
Sidewalk-enabled devices are supposed to serve as bridges to instantly connect through close-in networks. There are some private data concerns with the whole concept. If you are worried, now is the time to opt-out.
Privacy concerns over Amazon Sidewalk app
The company claims that the system is secure. They say it has three layers of encryption to keep any data shared over the network safe. Amazon says that users pooling bandwidth with neighbors will not be able to view the private data sent from neighbors’ devices. They also assure that there is an upload limit to preserve bandwidth.
The problem is almost every large technology company has breached their consumer’s trust where private data is concerned. Zoom was misleading consumers over its data security by claiming end-to-end encryption. Twitter “accidentally” sold users’ private data for marketing purposes. Disney and Viacom are settling complaints about passing on children’s’ private data to marketing companies, as well. There are too many examples to list here.
