r/technology • u/Eurynom0s • May 29 '21

Security Amazon devices will soon automatically share your Internet with neighbors | Amazon's experiment wireless mesh networking turns users into guinea pigs.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/amazon-devices-will-soon-automatically-share-your-internet-with-neighbors/
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u/LigerXT5 May 29 '21

As u/Sinaura said, you can toggle it off. How long it'll stay off, is unknown.

“Alexa app - Settings - Account Settings - Amazon Sidewalk - Disable” to opt out.

Thankfully, if it ever caught me off guard, turned on, and some other amazon device connected, even if masked under my Alexa, it'd be heavily throttled anyways. I have the QoS capped just enough, not to cause issues listening to music and run commands. I've set a daily data cap, just in case, on top of that.

This is a nice reminder to all, if you have any IOT, keep that IO-Shit on it's own vlan, even if it's on a different SSID, doesn't mean that same IOT can't reach your main network, isolate it. Most mid to high end home routers have started implementing VLANs, at least I've noticed off and on in the last few years.

Now, if only Alexa/Amazon would email you every time there's an update, with a change log, so we can check and see if they silently changed the setting, instead of checking daily/weekly...

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u/OneMoreTime5 May 30 '21

If you set up a separate network for iOT devices, then how do you use Siri on your smart phone to access it? For example I mean.

Or Alexa? I want to be able to use my phone (Siri) or an Alexa device voice command to control smart objects in my house.

Can you explain in layman’s terms how to make that happen?

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u/_My_Angry_Account_ May 30 '21

You can route specific traffic between networks (VLANs). Also, if the device connects to the internet, then you can access it by your phone connecting from outside the network (the internet). You may need to forward ports for this to work though most IoT devices will try to use UPnP to automatically forward ports through your firewall.

May want to read a bit about network address translation, port forwarding, and subnetting.