Amazon Sidewalk. Will you use it?

Taken from the Amazon Sidewalk landing page

Amazon Sidewalk is a shared network that helps devices like Amazon Echo devices, Ring Security Cams, outdoor lights, motion sensors, and Tile trackers work better at home and beyond the front door. When enabled, Sidewalk can unlock unique benefits for your device, support other Sidewalk devices in your community, and even locate pets or lost items.

For example, if your Echo device loses its Wi-Fi connection, Sidewalk can simplify reconnecting to your router. For select Ring devices, you can continue to receive motion alerts from your Ring Security Cams and customer support can still troubleshoot problems even if your devices lose their Wi-Fi connection. Sidewalk can also extend the working range for your Sidewalk-enabled devices, such as Ring smart lights, pet locators or smart locks, so they can stay connected and continue to work over longer distances.

Amazon does not charge any fees to join Sidewalk.

Wow no fees to share our networks with other people we don’t know, what’s not to like?

Obviously my :cow2: :poop: meter is going off the charts with this one, but I was curious if there is anyone that knew of, and planned to use this service. If so what’s the draw? Id’ honestly like to hear the other side of the coin (other than Jeff’s)

This new “service” goes into effect June 8th. If your just finding out you may want this info too.

Alexa opt out

Ring opt out

Not a chance. I feel bad for all the unsuspecting non-tech crowd that’s about to get bitten by this. However, I do look forward in a traffic-accident rubber-necker sort of way to all the bad publicity and lawsuits coming Amazon’s way from all the identity theft that’s sure to follow.

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I saw this a few days ago and I’m dismayed by the audacity, even for JB!

I won’t use anything that requires cloud so it’s not a concern.

Although I won’t be using it as this is a google home, I have done some research into this and its not AS bad as it seems.

It won’t let people just connect and browse the web, It is 100% for letting devices like your doorbell or lights retain a degree of functionality if you loose net access at your house. Kinda like a backup neighborhood wide zigbee network with light limited and shared cloud access…

It’s capped at a max of 500Mb a month, assuming you trust them to obey that and not jack it up each month without warning.

Potentially it “could” be of some use but more than likely its just going to be another source of headaches for people trying to figure out why their device isn’t working…

Why did my rock solid mesh and network suddenly stop behaving… oh look I wasted 2 weeks and $1000 redoing my stuff and the problem is actually that the neighbors have 30 sidewalk devices all on random channels drowning out everything else

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I was just coming to see if anyone else was having wifi issues the last few days. Id decided not to opt out just to see. However ive had a lot of connectivity issues the last few days. Was curuous if it was related and if anyone else had noticed anything. Or if its just cooincidence.

I disabled sidewalk this morning. Will see if issues persist.

That a very weighted statement. I guess I’m old school. Trust is earned not given.

Keep us posted, I’d be surprised if it did, but anything is possible. Especially at the onset.

Must be a US thing, sidewalk doesn’t appear in my app’s settings (Australia).

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Afaik, it’s only USA
And seeing how long it takes for features to hit Australian Amazon, I don’t think we need to worry about this for a long time!

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