The Data Game: What Amazon Knows About You & How To Stop It; ACLU, 'Sidewalk'
- The Guardian, Feb. 27, 2022. - The tech giant has many ways of gathering information about its users’ activity – from Prime to Alexa. But how much can it collect and what can you do to keep your life private? -
From selling books out of Jeff Bezos’s garage to a global conglomerate with a yearly revenue topping $400bn (£290bn), much of the monstrous growth of Amazon has been fuelled by its customers’ data. Continuous analysis of customer data determines, among other things, prices, suggested purchases and what profitable own-label products Amazon chooses to produce.
The 200 million users who are Amazon Prime members are not only the corporation’s most valuable customers but also their richest source of user data.
The more Amazon and services you use – whether it’s the shopping app, the Kindle e-reader, the Ring doorbell, Echo smart speaker or the Prime streaming service – the more their algorithms can infer what kind of person you are and what you are most likely to buy next. The firm’s software is so accomplished at prediction that third parties can hire its algorithms as a service called Amazon Forecast. Not everyone is happy about this level of surveillance. Those who have requested their data from Amazon are astonished by the vast amounts of information they are sent, including audio files from each time they speak to the company’s voice assistant, Alexa.
Like its data-grabbing counterparts Google and Facebook, Amazon’s practices have come under the scrutiny of regulators. Last year, Amazon was hit with a $886.6m (£636m) fine for processing personal data in violation of EU data protection rules, which it is appealing against. And a recent Wired investigation showed concerning privacy and security failings at the tech giant. - So, what data does Amazon collect and share and what can you do to stop it? - The data Amazon collects, according to its privacy policy - Strict EU regulation in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and UK equivalent the Data Protection Act limit the ways personal data can be used in Europe compared with the US.
But, according to Amazon’s privacy policy, the tech giant still collects a large amount of information. This covers three areas: information you give Amazon, data it collects automatically and information from other sources such as delivery data from carriers. Amazon can collect your name, address, searches and recordings when you speak to the Alexa voice assistant. It knows your orders, content you watch on Prime, your contacts if you upload them and communications with it via email. Meanwhile, when you use its website, cookie trackers are used to “enhance your shopping experience” and improve its services, Amazon says. - More,
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/27/the-data-game-what-amazon-knows-about-you-and-how-to-stop-it
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- ACLU, News & Commentary, 'Sidewalk: The Next Frontier Of Amazon’s Surveillance Infrastructure.' June 18, 2021. A panopticon-style surveillance system like this is a nightmare for civil rights and civil liberties. 'A Wolf In Prime's Clothing.'
Amazon has doubled down on its private surveillance infrastructure by activating Sidewalk, a private network to connect Amazon’s servers with smart home devices and gadgets sold by Amazon and its partner companies. With concerning privacy and security implications, this network automatically connects users’ Amazon Echo, Ring security cameras, and more to other devices and gadgets beyond their front door. With this initiative, Amazon is once more confirming that its true allegiances do not lie with its customers; instead, the company is moving to expand its already capacious surveillance infrastructure.
A Wolf in Prime’s Clothing: Created in 1994 as an online bookstore, Amazon has grown over the past 25 years to become one of the world’s largest digital marketplaces, a growing delivery service company, a profitable cloud services provider, and even a leader of the space race. Today, Amazon is a trillion-dollar company systematically engaged in surveillance capitalism. Powerful companies and government agencies like the U.S. Department of Homeland Security use Amazon’s cloud services platform to host myriad surveillance and policing tools. The company has a promiscuous relationship with law enforcement and intelligence agencies, including the sharing of customer information and unchecked government contracts...
4. Sidewalk is Amazon’s private internet: Lastly, Amazon is virtually on the way to creating a private internet. On the official website, Amazon mentions that there will be a Sidewalk standard that other companies & developers can use to build Sidewalk-enabled devices. This would essentially create a private network that connects all sorts of devices — inside & outside our homes — with Amazon as its only gatekeeper. This would leave Amazon practically acting as an ISP, open to the same security risks, but without being subjected to the regulations ISPs are. (Amazon is also building Project Kuiper, a low Earth orbit satellite constellation capable of providing broadband service.) Perhaps worse, the government would be able to get all the information it needs from one place...
- More, https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/sidewalk-the-next-frontier-of-amazons-surveillance-infrastructure/
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