Amazon may be sharing your Internet bandwidth, here’s how you opt out

BOSTON — Amazon is now sharing your Internet connection with your neighbors. It’s a new feature called Amazon sidewalk.

Millions and millions of Sidewalk bridges are installed and active right now in people’s homes and some don’t even know it’s on.

Amazon Flipped the switch and turned on Sidewalk for everyone as of Tuesday on most Alexa and Ring devices including some that date back several years.

The new program forces many Echo smart speakers and Ring security cameras to automatically share a small portion of their home wireless bandwidth with neighbors.

”Actually I read about it and how to turn it off because the safety about sharing Internet location information and especially With everything going on right now with a cyber attacks and everything,” said Oswaldo Zabalu of West Roxbury.

While some users were quick to turn it off, others see a need to have a wider range of internet bandwith through dry spots in their neighborhood and are willing to look past any security risks.

”I’m a software engineer so I know what hacking is a little bit so I feel safe right now,” said Sowjanya Janga of Walpole. “I think it’s a choice everyone has to make them selves.”

Amazon says data flowing through its network has three layers of encryption to help prevent hackers, but some security experts like Mark Ostrowski of Checkpoint say enter at your own risk.

”When you or I have a problem with our phone or laptop there’s a screen in front of us and we can see that we’re having a problem, we can see that we have been taken advantage of or maybe we have malware installed, but a lot of these devices do not have screens so they could be compromised. They could be communicating to a malicious network and we have no idea,” said Ostrowski. “Maybe the encryption is solid but the applications that are behind have vulnerabilities and those are the exact things that attackers look to make exploits of.”

“I’m very protective with my Internet especially social media and things like that,” said Zabalu. “Anything can happen, people can get into your house by the connection. That’s one of the things that I said I want to keep it private, I don’t wanna share any information that I have.”

Here’s how you disable it:

1. Open your Alexa app on your iPhone or Android device

2. Tap the More menu

3. Tap Settings

4. Tap Amazon Sidewalk

5. Toggle the slider to “off”

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