Everyone is talking about Amazon promoting their own products, but can we talk about the type of products being promoted in the top 5? Security camera, Ring doorbell, Echos, i.e. all surveillance devices people are willingly and voluntarily putting in their private homes, just waiting for that data to be compromised by hackers, data leaks, you name it.
Call me tinfoil I don't care, but don't invite me to your homes either if the place is going to be bugged, I'm good.
And to think the more people that add these things, the more of a seamless network it creates for "them." If 20% of houses have the ring doorbell (etc), capturing, processing and categorizing everything that goes by it with ML, how long will it take before they are able to track people basically everywhere? Even those who do not own these devices but happen to pass in front of them which will be increasingly impossible to avoid? Their AI will literally be watching you leave your house (from your neighbors) and driving to work, capturing your license plate and knowing who you are via facial recognition, watching (recording) everywhere you go. All nice and tidy with timestamps, stored forever with easy recall. Coupled with the other data they already have. Where where you Jan 27, 2023 at 19:23:43UTC? You'll likely forget by 2024, but Amazon will know and remember forever, thanks to your neighbor. Just think of how much better they can "target ads" with this data, or whatever their justification is, making the world a better place to live. Our antiquated and broken way of lawmaking will take 10 years at least to catch up. That's a lifetime at the current pace.
Your phone can do all the same things as those devices, and it's a better target for attackers because it's always on you.
I just bought into the Nest system (which also had great deals on black friday), and I'm just not worried about it.
In reality, bugging my residence isn't going to result in very interesting data. What exactly do you think is going to happen?
I just assume all of my data is already compromised, and so is yours, and neither of us can do anything about it. I think it's only useful to mitigate real world risks that materialize from compromised data. So PIN-lock your credit to avoid identity theft, physically secure your home to avoid break-ins, block ads to avoid influence campaigns, segment and restrict your IoT devices to avoid jumpboxes inside your network, etc.
If I'm doing something that I do not want recorded, I'd be using linux with a tor connection and strong opsec. The house can still be bugged as long as I don't have a camera pointed at my monitor.
If you're trying to host secret meetings in your house, maybe you should consider building a secure room to facilitate that. There's a reason the feds take this approach with SCIFs, because there's really no other way to do it.
My assumption is that Amazon will look to integrate home services (home cleaning, home cooking, etc.) once enough people have installed those surveillance devices.
My idea of their pitch will be: "our home cleaners can access your home while you're away and they will be monitored 100% of the time while in your house, you already have security cameras, etc. installed so there's no need to worry."
There is nothing wrong with IoT stuff provided that care is taken in deployment. You can do it yourself or you could get me to install it instead as a ... a ... hmmm ... IoT accredited errr ... what standard is appropriate?
As it turns out I am personally CREST accredited and run a small IT company with ISO9001, 27001 and advise on PCI DSS and the like. I bathe in tin foil.
Anyway, VLANS and firewall and self hosting is the key to my idea of a decent IoT smart home. Also I insist on manual controls if the controller is down. I also do a proper risk assessment on each device.
Yes, but if you carry around a smartphone it’s kind of a moot point. Unfortunately, I think pervasive surveillance is inevitable. Perhaps when video and audio evidence becomes completely unreliable due to deepfakes type shenanigans it will actually be a positive because it will make all the surveillance data worthless? Maybe they are the the answer to each other’s problems?
If you are allowing for non-legal or quasi-legal means, then most of the devices we carry are susceptible to mostly non-video privacy invasion (cell phones, fitbits, implanted medical devices, cars, etc.). Adding the Ring increases video surveillance. An Echo Dot in your home increases your vulnerability by adding another device (increasing your attack footprint), but the similar data and more could be accessed through your phone.
For example: A phone's gyroscope might be able to listen in on you, even if your microphone is off:
It just goes to show how much the powers-that-be don't want to talk about data privacy, and just want you to go back to your lives while corporations continue to do whatever they want with their newfound oil. The Snowden revelations are up there with 9/11 in terms of American history significance, and when they happened, barely anything changed, especially in the general public.
No one cares, no one can be bothered to be galvanized to give a shit, and it's because there's too much money to be made from the status quo staying the same.
"Call me tinfoil I don't care, but don't invite me to your homes either if the place is going to be bugged, I'm good."
The funniest part of this opinion is that 95% of the time I hear it, I say, can you take the bugged device out of your pocket before you talk about not being near bugs?
Always with the iPhones and Androids, even though they have the same exact technology for always listening, activating, and sending your data to a database for collection.
Very rarely, they'll pull out a dumbphone and that's respectable since generally only governments bug those, and only once in my entire life have I heard someone criticizing bugs actually not walk with a cellphone at all. Now there's someone who demonstrates their convictions with their actions.
Many comments refer to this as "Amazon promoting its own products over competitors" but that's not the right way to look at this. They aren't promoting their own products, they're promoting exclusively the Ring/Blink/Echo family.
In the past I've bought Amazon house brand clothing, batteries, sheets. They aren't promoting similar products that I'm likely to buy. Instead more than half the storefront is devoted to Echo products which I've never bought, and never will.
This isn't a case of "here's something we think you'll like," it's "here's something we want you to have."
Spot on. Also consumers are attracted to tech gadgets during cyber Monday sales so it's even way easier for them to sell those items over non-electronics.
To be the devil's advocate, what if those deals really were the best? What if Amazon sold those items at such a loss that no other deals could compare? (That's probably not the case, but just thinking hypothetically).
Also:
> That potential favoritism can come in varied forms... even right at checkout when an Amazon customer is ready to buy an item from a non-Amazon brand. This last tactic could be compared to a cashier in a physical store showing you a deal for the store’s own brand when you walk up to pay for a competitor’s product.
Would it really be considered anti-competitive if a brick and mortar store did that? I feel like I've had cashiers actually do that before, and I was grateful because usually it's a better deal on some generic stuff where I don't care what brand it actually is.
Amazon Echo devices are so cheap that Amazon probably isn't making any profit at regular prices. Amazon is practically giving them away to generate more sales, more lock in and collect more data, bringing them well beyond a replaceable online store.
Of course when the devices are heavily discounted on Cyber Monday they are among the best possible deals (in terms of hardware per dollar). The only thing I know about that matches this is Valve selling Steam Links (last year) or Steam Controllers (this year) at 90% discount for mostly the same reasons.
This is why avoiding a conflict of interest is generally seen as the right thing to do. Not everyone will (knowingly) take advantage of such a situation, but questions will always be raised that cast doubt on the whole thing.
All five of the devices in the list are surveillance or spy devices which capture data that Amazon likely considers very valuable. As such, Amazon is likely selling many of these devices at cost or below because they provide Amazon with more data.
The list of five devices includes three cameras and two alexa listening devices.
For me Black Friday and Cyber Monday really didn't have many deals. The Chromebooks I was looking at are all cheaper now than those days. Amazon devices really were discounted heavily though.
I used camelcamelcamel to check prices on a bunch of things I was interested in that were advertised as black friday / cyber monday deals. About 90% of them were the same price as normal or the same price as if you just waited for cyclical discounts to come around. There were a few advertised things that had legitimate deals of about 10-15% off the best price from the last 12 months, though.
I don't browse Amazon, but when I was ordering something their "Cyber Monday Deals" caught my eye. Oh, okay, I'll bite. Every single item under "Electronics" was an Amazon device. Really? Because, for example, $150 off an iPad Pro seems worth a mention (I bought one). Surely there was something that was a deal that didn't have Amazon's logo on it.
I know, I know, smack 'em on the nose. I don't really care about that so much as the fact that Amazon isn't dead to me just yet, but they're on life support and every little niggle such as this gets me closer to pulling the plug.
Supermarkets and drugstores are notorious for this.
Supermarkets will often see a product that is selling well and copy it as closely as they can without going over the line -- similar colors, size, packaging -- then sell it under their own brand right next to the branded product at a more attractive price.
It feels unfair if you're a producer, but it's often just one of the costs of having access to the distribution platform.
Didn't Google get into trouble for putting their own shopping results above other search results? It seems like Amazon should seriously be penalized for this. It's completely anticompetitive.
Amazon also slapped the "Deal of the day" label on many products during black Friday and cyber Monday, even though the prices for those products were still the same as before. No price drops but good at creating FOMO for consumers.
My local supermarket is a marketplace for lots of brands. They heavily promote their own generic brands. What kind of punishment should they get from the government?
If Ford dealerships were a marketplace for vehicles other than Fords, I'd agree with this comment.
The issue I have with Amazon is that for many folks, they ARE the marketplace to buy goods. Pushing their own products as the "best Cyber Monday deal" is when things get a bit suspect, at least for me. And honestly, what represents "Best"? Best for the consumer? Or, best for Amazon?
(My cynicism is probably due to working retail (Staples) and having managers push us to sell Staples-branded items due to higher margins for the store/company (and we sales were happy to comply due to the higher spiffs). While I truly enjoy on-line shopping since I no longer deal with sales people, I'm fully aware that the algorithm pushing that "BEST CHOICE" IS the new "sales person". And they know more about me than any sales person in a physical store would ever know...scary.)
...was just going to say the same thing. I don't understand how that even surprises anyone.
What I find more troubling is that the default sort order for browsing search results and categories etc is stuff like "Sort by: Featured", "Bestseller", interleaved with "Sponsored Results", bla, bla, bla. What I want to know is which button to click for "please make a goddamn effort to show me the stuff where it's in my best interest to see it, given the query I gave you, or given the category I browsed into, rather than in your best interest or in the interest of someone who paid for the privilege of my attention" -- A long time ago, I had some level of trust that online shops were able to deliver on that. But that's no longer true with Amazon.
I keep seeing this way too frequently - Amazon pushing everything towards a dystopian environment. These posts gets highly voted and then its as if we forget and move on let things be the way they were. Amazon has gained too much momentum and now its way too difficult to stop it.
These are two completely different businesses. Amazon is a marketplace that sells basically anything sold by anyone. Apple is a manufacturer who lists their own products or accessories for their own products.
Can you buy Amazon products anywhere except Amazon?
I feel like this would be more legitimately "anti-competitive" if these products were available in all sorts of places (like most of Amazon's merchandise). But the only place to buy Kindles and Echos is Amazon.
You can buy Kindles and Echos and Rings at Best Buy, Target, and Office Depot. You can also buy Echos and Rings, but not Kindles, at Lowes. Home Depot has Rings, but not Echos or Kindles as far as I can tell.
[+] [-] _arvin|6 years ago|reply
Call me tinfoil I don't care, but don't invite me to your homes either if the place is going to be bugged, I'm good.
[+] [-] cronix|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anon9001|6 years ago|reply
I just bought into the Nest system (which also had great deals on black friday), and I'm just not worried about it.
In reality, bugging my residence isn't going to result in very interesting data. What exactly do you think is going to happen?
I just assume all of my data is already compromised, and so is yours, and neither of us can do anything about it. I think it's only useful to mitigate real world risks that materialize from compromised data. So PIN-lock your credit to avoid identity theft, physically secure your home to avoid break-ins, block ads to avoid influence campaigns, segment and restrict your IoT devices to avoid jumpboxes inside your network, etc.
If I'm doing something that I do not want recorded, I'd be using linux with a tor connection and strong opsec. The house can still be bugged as long as I don't have a camera pointed at my monitor.
If you're trying to host secret meetings in your house, maybe you should consider building a secure room to facilitate that. There's a reason the feds take this approach with SCIFs, because there's really no other way to do it.
[+] [-] ne0flex|6 years ago|reply
My idea of their pitch will be: "our home cleaners can access your home while you're away and they will be monitored 100% of the time while in your house, you already have security cameras, etc. installed so there's no need to worry."
[+] [-] imglorp|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gerdesj|6 years ago|reply
As it turns out I am personally CREST accredited and run a small IT company with ISO9001, 27001 and advise on PCI DSS and the like. I bathe in tin foil.
In the UK we have a pretty simple standard called Cyber Essentials and a higher one called Cyber Essentials Plus. https://www.cyberessentials.ncsc.gov.uk/ why not give it a go? Even if you are not from the UK then there is some good advice there - https://www.cyberessentials.ncsc.gov.uk/advice/
Anyway, VLANS and firewall and self hosting is the key to my idea of a decent IoT smart home. Also I insist on manual controls if the controller is down. I also do a proper risk assessment on each device.
[+] [-] oxymoran|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Communitivity|6 years ago|reply
For example: A phone's gyroscope might be able to listen in on you, even if your microphone is off:
https://www.wired.com/2014/08/gyroscope-listening-hack/
[+] [-] bisby|6 years ago|reply
you forgot, "sold" or "misused against you".
It's just as dangerous in the hands of amazon as it is in the hands of hackers.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] subject117|6 years ago|reply
google:duckduckgo:ring:?
[+] [-] Dirlewanger|6 years ago|reply
No one cares, no one can be bothered to be galvanized to give a shit, and it's because there's too much money to be made from the status quo staying the same.
[+] [-] criley2|6 years ago|reply
The funniest part of this opinion is that 95% of the time I hear it, I say, can you take the bugged device out of your pocket before you talk about not being near bugs?
Always with the iPhones and Androids, even though they have the same exact technology for always listening, activating, and sending your data to a database for collection.
Very rarely, they'll pull out a dumbphone and that's respectable since generally only governments bug those, and only once in my entire life have I heard someone criticizing bugs actually not walk with a cellphone at all. Now there's someone who demonstrates their convictions with their actions.
[+] [-] millstone|6 years ago|reply
In the past I've bought Amazon house brand clothing, batteries, sheets. They aren't promoting similar products that I'm likely to buy. Instead more than half the storefront is devoted to Echo products which I've never bought, and never will.
This isn't a case of "here's something we think you'll like," it's "here's something we want you to have."
[+] [-] miguelmota|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reading-at-work|6 years ago|reply
Also:
> That potential favoritism can come in varied forms... even right at checkout when an Amazon customer is ready to buy an item from a non-Amazon brand. This last tactic could be compared to a cashier in a physical store showing you a deal for the store’s own brand when you walk up to pay for a competitor’s product.
Would it really be considered anti-competitive if a brick and mortar store did that? I feel like I've had cashiers actually do that before, and I was grateful because usually it's a better deal on some generic stuff where I don't care what brand it actually is.
[+] [-] hateful|6 years ago|reply
It's like saying "I got a really good deal on a billboard for my house." and all it does is show ads for someone else.
[+] [-] wongarsu|6 years ago|reply
Of course when the devices are heavily discounted on Cyber Monday they are among the best possible deals (in terms of hardware per dollar). The only thing I know about that matches this is Valve selling Steam Links (last year) or Steam Controllers (this year) at 90% discount for mostly the same reasons.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] hnick|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdinsn|6 years ago|reply
Yep, I'll defend Amazon on this. I've bought Amazon's Goodthread chinos, and they are by far the best quality pants for their price range
[+] [-] scblock|6 years ago|reply
All five of the devices in the list are surveillance or spy devices which capture data that Amazon likely considers very valuable. As such, Amazon is likely selling many of these devices at cost or below because they provide Amazon with more data.
The list of five devices includes three cameras and two alexa listening devices.
[+] [-] rb808|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdorazio|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mirekrusin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikestew|6 years ago|reply
I know, I know, smack 'em on the nose. I don't really care about that so much as the fact that Amazon isn't dead to me just yet, but they're on life support and every little niggle such as this gets me closer to pulling the plug.
[+] [-] JauntTrooper|6 years ago|reply
Supermarkets will often see a product that is selling well and copy it as closely as they can without going over the line -- similar colors, size, packaging -- then sell it under their own brand right next to the branded product at a more attractive price.
It feels unfair if you're a producer, but it's often just one of the costs of having access to the distribution platform.
[+] [-] cryptozeus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EliRivers|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] helpPeople|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] warent|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RegBarclay|6 years ago|reply
Also, if I call a Ford dealer and ask them for their best deals, why would I expect them to tell me about Toyotas?
[+] [-] octocop|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] miguelmota|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Akinato|6 years ago|reply
It should probably be more punitive than it will be, but that doesn't seem to be the way our governments are going these days.
[+] [-] gtirloni|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ng7j5d9|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j79|6 years ago|reply
The issue I have with Amazon is that for many folks, they ARE the marketplace to buy goods. Pushing their own products as the "best Cyber Monday deal" is when things get a bit suspect, at least for me. And honestly, what represents "Best"? Best for the consumer? Or, best for Amazon?
(My cynicism is probably due to working retail (Staples) and having managers push us to sell Staples-branded items due to higher margins for the store/company (and we sales were happy to comply due to the higher spiffs). While I truly enjoy on-line shopping since I no longer deal with sales people, I'm fully aware that the algorithm pushing that "BEST CHOICE" IS the new "sales person". And they know more about me than any sales person in a physical store would ever know...scary.)
[+] [-] stakhanov|6 years ago|reply
What I find more troubling is that the default sort order for browsing search results and categories etc is stuff like "Sort by: Featured", "Bestseller", interleaved with "Sponsored Results", bla, bla, bla. What I want to know is which button to click for "please make a goddamn effort to show me the stuff where it's in my best interest to see it, given the query I gave you, or given the category I browsed into, rather than in your best interest or in the interest of someone who paid for the privilege of my attention" -- A long time ago, I had some level of trust that online shops were able to deliver on that. But that's no longer true with Amazon.
[+] [-] eropple|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xz0r|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhawk28|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alfie81|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] droithomme|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lacker|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdnlafkjh34rw|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BookmarkSaver|6 years ago|reply
I feel like this would be more legitimately "anti-competitive" if these products were available in all sorts of places (like most of Amazon's merchandise). But the only place to buy Kindles and Echos is Amazon.
[+] [-] tzs|6 years ago|reply