Among the avalanche of new products unveiled at Amazon’s hardware event on Wednesday were two features that are a bit less tangible: “Sidewalk,” a new wireless protocol that links smart objects, and “eero,” a brand of WiFi router the company acquired and is selling for people to use in their homes.
With the new offerings, the number of Amazon-made routers and devices in homes and stores is set to increase nationwide. Sidewalk will use this proliferation of devices to build a “mesh network” — a wireless network where each device communicates with one another, working together to transmit data across the network — that spans broad geographical areas. According to Amazon’s announcement, the company found that placing 700 devices across Los Angeles was enough to cover the entire metropolitan area of the city.
Now, privacy watchdogs are sounding alarm bells about what that means for the company’s ability to surveil individuals.
Tech activist Liz O’Sullivan flagged the mesh network’s potential for surveillance during the Amazon hardware event and tweeted about it Thursday.
Here’s what you need to know about the new Amazon update and what it could mean for your privacy.
Amazon’s mesh network could help the tech giant monitor your phone’s location
Even if you don’t use Amazon’s wireless networks in your own home — or join its WiFi networks when you go out — the mesh network could enable Amazon to get data about the location of your devices.
Owners of WiFi networks can track what devices are nearby even if those devices don’t sign onto the network, just like a smartphone can detect nearby networks without signing on…
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