IoT Privacy Awareness – Amazon Sidewalk Goes Live Today

Always on IoT certainly has its benefits, but typically not without some risk. The key is to understand and weigh the risk versus reward, including the default (enabled or disabled) status of “said” benefits. To that end, Amazon rolled out its Sidewalk feature today across supported Alexa and Ring devices and enabled it by default. Amazon Sidewalk uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to broadcast low-bandwidth wireless signals, potentially up to a half-mile away. Multiple posts have been written about the concerns, but the SANS Internet Storm Center offers an objective and salient analysis to help users understand what Amazon Sidewalk is up to – including how Amazon plans to protect traffic and users through its encryption implementation. The bottom line: if you do not wish for your supported devices to participate, you have to intentionally opt-out through the device apps (currently Alexa or Ring). Read more about what Amazon Sidewalk is and is not at the SANS Internet Storm Center.