Amazon shuts down customer’s smart home

[maflynn]

If you are going to have connected devices, such as cameras, refrigerators lighting, heating/cooling then you're giving up your privacy and in some respects control - all in the name of convenience
Smart Thermostats Are Turning Down Air Conditioners During Heatwave

 

[laptech]

The only thing that confuses me about this is do those using Alexa need a current ongoing active amazon account for it to work? because from reading the article on the issue it looks like the homeowner had a number of smart items in the property that he had setup to use with Alexa but when Amazon closed down his account Alexa no longer worked thus he could not control any of the smart devices he had originally setup with Alexa.

My brother in law has a number of smart devices that he has controlled via Alexa, the house lighting, the home music system, the heating and it never occurred to me to ask him if his amazon account went down would it prevent him from using the smart devices via Alexa.

So, do you need an active amazon account for Alexa to work?

 

[Longplays]

The only thing that confuses me about this is do those using Alexa need a current ongoing active amazon account for it to work? because from reading the article on the issue it looks like the homeowner had a number of smart items in the property that he had setup to use with Alexa but when Amazon closed down his account Alexa no longer worked thus he could not control any of the smart devices he had originally setup with Alexa.

My brother in law has a number of smart devices that he has controlled via Alexa, the house lighting, the home music system, the heating and it never occurred to me to ask him if his amazon account went down would it prevent him from using the smart devices via Alexa.

So, do you need an active amazon account for Alexa to work?

Yes it a pre req.

 

[MajorFubar]

No way in a thousand years would I have that kind of dystopian automation in my home where something other than disaster can decide whether I have heating, lights, water, or other essential-for-life services. In terms of home automation the most I have is a couple of lamps operated by electronic timers. The rest can go ---- itself. And I don't care how neanderthal that makes me sound.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Add another reason why I don't do this "smart home" crap. All this stuff overpriced, dystopian, and a hog on my internet network, and I need my network clear so my netplay isn't garbage otherwise I won't get matches anymore.

 

[laptech]

Add another reason why I don't do this "smart home" crap. All this stuff overpriced, dystopian, and a hog on my internet network, and I need my network clear so my netplay isn't garbage otherwise I won't get matches anymore.

Your post got me thinking of a Linus tech tips video I saw where he was having wifi/internet issues with a wireless sound system device with it turning out to be the actual device itself continuously pinging the speakers which was causing the system to not function properly. It got me thinking, with all these smart devices now becoming common place in the home, how often are they pinging the wifi router to see if they can see it because all this pinging would surely slow down the wifi connection to all the devices in the home.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Your post got me thinking of a Linus tech tips video I saw where he was having wifi/internet issues with a wireless sound system device with it turning out to be the actual device itself continuously pinging the speakers which was causing the system to not function properly. It got me thinking, with all these smart devices now becoming common place in the home, how often are they pinging the wifi router to see if they can see it because all this pinging would surely slow down the wifi connection to all the devices in the home.

My HomePod Mini doesn't stop pinging mine at all and when i got guests over they keep complaining how the HomePod is trying to connect to their iPhones. Hell my wifi is a mesh network and for the first couple of days the Homepod wouldn't even connect to the damn network to complete setup, and none of the Apple Senior Support staff knew what the hell to do, but one random post on Reddit knew how to fix it. I don't even use the HomePod Mini for smart home stuff I just wanted a good bedside speaker, and that speaker is many things, but smart is not one of them.

"Smart home" stuff is garbage and eWaste, and now with the news that Amazon can just remotely terminate any of your Amazon smart home stuff is further reinforcing that claim

 

[laptech]

It certainly makes the prospect of smart cars very daunting especially if a requirement of their use will be to login to the car manufacturers icloud so the car is able to maintain constant communication with the icloud so technical data and camera footage can be automatically uploaded at periodic intervals and then the car manufacturers see's or hears of something they do not like and shutdowns the customers account thus rendering the car inoperable.

 

[maflynn]

and a hog on my internet network,

Don't forget vulnerabilities. Security and patching isn't a high priority for these smart devices, and few people set up vlans to isolate their smart devices from their regular network

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Don't forget vulnerabilities. Security and patching isn't a high priority for these smart devices, and few people set up vlans to isolate their smart devices from their regular network

Oh yeah forgot about that.

Man it's incredible how bad smart homes turned out to be after the Alexa fad wore off.

 

[Longplays]

Don't forget vulnerabilities. Security and patching isn't a high priority for these smart devices, and few people set up vlans to isolate their smart devices from their regular network

That's why I replace devices after their final Security Updates.

2015 Windows 10 in our org would be replaced with 2021 Win11 by October 14, 2025. It gives Microsoft 4 years of patching opportunities.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

That's why I replace devices after their final Security Updates.

2015 Windows 10 in our org would be replaced with 2021 Win11 by October 14, 2025. It gives Microsoft 4 years of patching opportunities.

This is just reinforcing my claim that all this "smart home" stuff is just eWaste

 

[Longplays]

This is just reinforcing my claim that all this "smart home" stuff is just eWaste

Just adding a new data point.

To me e-waste are devices that

- replicates pre-existing primary devices and markets it as a specialization
- increases power/bandwidth consumption without materially improving things
- novelties because YouTubers keep up selling it their subscribers
- glitchy and cannot hear you right

 

[maflynn]

That's why I replace devices after their final Security Updates.

You're assuming that these manufacturers are patching for vulnerabilities.

Samsung had that issue in 2015 related to your email easily being exposed. I tried googling when that was patched, and maybe it was but Samsung doesn't appear to be transparent in what vulnerabilities (if any) are being patched.

 

[Analog Kid]

The (alleged) source himself:

A Tale of Unwanted Disruption: My Week Without Amazon

On Wednesday, May 31, 2023, I finally regained access to my Amazon account after an unexpected and unwarranted lockout that lasted nearly…

medium.com

If true, I agree. It's insane and frightening that a completely unverified - though easily disprovable - (racism) imputation is enough to impact your actual devices.
Sounds like vigilante justice but it is a good reminder for people not to depend too much on the internet/cloud.

[Note: against all my expectations, it's starting to appear that this is exactly what happened... More news outlets are starting to report responses from Amazon about the incident.]

Ok, so the summary here, if I'm following this, is that an Amazon package delivery driver dropped a package off, heard something on a doorbell speaker, presumably raised it with his superiors in logistics who have a reputation of not caring if their employees need to pee in bottles to get the job done but chose to escalate this particular concern across one of the worlds most massive corporations to the point it reached the attention of the distant Alexa organization which took it upon themselves to shutdown his account, an action of which he was notified by an actual Amazon executive with nothing better to do than target and answer a call from one person buying a package.

And this all coincidentally happens a few days after they created a Medium account suggesting they're a Microsoft engineer and posted a vanilla, almost certainly AI generated, article about how Bing search is going to take over the world.

Then they write this article up and include a picture with a very humanly written sounding "A locked Amazon Echo dot with the Amazon logo on it wrapped in a chain with a padlock" caption. An image which, I feel compelled to mention, does not feature a padlock.

To bring attention to their plight, they then reach out to the intrepid and hard hitting journalistic powerhouse, Louis Rossman.

Until this gets the attention of someone willing to do even basic follow up, I'll take the odds on bot with a ChatGPT account. Just looking at how quickly people were willing to swallow this as more likely true than not is a bit disappointing.

 

[inquirerGeneral]

It's ridiculous that Amazon does that -- but they were ALWAYS the most likely to make some stupid mistake like this and have no good way to fix it due to the way Amazon's internal structure(s) work.

Additionally, Ring\Alexa\Echo\Eero is by far the worst smart home company for real privacy.

Amazon has been the biggest privacy dumpster fire in the making for a decade+, it is far past anything Facebook has ever done.

Amazon's Dark Secret: It Has Failed to Protect Your Data​

Amazon's Dark Secret: It Has Failed to Protect Your Data

Voyeurs. Sabotaged accounts. Backdoor schemes. For years, the retail giant has handled your information less carefully than it handles your packages.

www.wired.com

They hide it realllllly well.

 

[dk001]

Follow up by LR.

 

[msackey]

This is insane and also not unexpected of a world in which we are allowing more and more surveillance type of devices into our homes. Many of these so-called smart devices are variations of surveillance.

We have a thermo stat (by Resideo/Honeywell) that has geofencing and depending on if we are away or at home, it adjusts the temperature per our preferences. This thermostat is basically connected to a Resideo/Honeywell central server and it's this server that indicates to the thermostat whether we are away or at home (geo fencing information come from our iPhones). If the Resideo central server ever acts up, we can totally switch to make this thermostat make use of HomeKit to control it. And if any of these central servers ever act up, we'll just disconnect and use the thermostat as a regular one.

I find it rather insane to have so much of one's home dependent on "smart" surveillance technologies. Our two garage doors came with the option of being wi-fi enabled. No thank you. Why? Never needed it. And I'd rather take the risk of forgetting to shut the door and have to drive home to close it, rather than be frequently paranoid whether the smart device is working properly and did it suddenly open the door without our command?

 

[msackey]

When I read stuff like this I suspect I am living in some kind of technological stone age.

I can safely say we have not one piece of "smart" equipment in our household — I don't mean that to come across as some sort of badge of honour — it's just what it is.
[...]

If possible, better to live without smart devices as much as possible.

I can imagine a scenario where a differently-abled person might find the smart devices very useful in their daily live. I can see that. For us, thankfully we do not need them. As mentioned in a post I just made, we do have one smart device and that's the thermostat. We have it because we are trying to conserve electricity and it for the device to know if we are away or at home is good for that. I recognize there are some possible risks to that too...

 

[Analog Kid]

Follow up by LR.

I'm not watching this or any of his click bait videos, but I'll go out on a limb here and assume what he means by "infighting" is that the members of his cult should spend less time questioning his teachings and should instead come together around the idea that everything he says, factual or not, is in service of a higher truth?

 

[robd003]

Why does Amazon value it's drivers (expense) more than it's customers (revenue generators)?

Disabling a customers account should be the last thing any business does.

 

[Longplays]

Follow up by LR.

I am listening LR's spoken word reply on his YT video and... I defiantely need to spend less time online.

The number of words said to reply to trollbait is worth a hike outdoors in the woods.

 

[Longplays]

Why does Amazon value it's drivers (expense) more than it's customers (revenue generators)?

Disabling a customers account should be the last thing any business does.

The antiwork crowd will call that being a good employer. 😅

 

[TracerAnalog]

I have lots of connected devices at home. First sign of trouble they're out and I go back to old fashioned switches and RF remotes. In other words: I have old school back ups for everything. I also do not rely on one brand. Downside: a whole bunch of apps, upside: reduced vendor buy-in.

 

[msackey]

I have lots of connected devices at home. First sign of trouble they're out and I go back to old fashioned switches and RF remotes. In other words: I have old school back ups for everything. I also do not rely on one brand. Downside: a whole bunch of apps, upside: reduced vendor buy-in.

If one needs to rely on smart devices, isn't it best to make sure all of them can work with HomeKit alone? That way, the central server is really your HomeHub which you have control of.