Amazon has announced a new initiative set to be released on June 8. The program, called Amazon Sidewalk, introduces a new long-term effort to extend the working range of low bandwidth, low-power, smart lights, sensors, and other low-cost devices customers install at the edge of their home network. Amazon Sidewalk has been in the works for a few years, first announced by the company in September 2019. The new June 8 announcement gives consumers just a week to learn about the initiative and opt out of it if they choose. Sidewalk will perform a variety of functions, including keep motion alerts from security cameras coming even when Wi-Fi services are down, it will stretch out Wi-Fi to smart lights at the edge of your driveway, and it will act like a Tile tag to help customers find pets and valuables.
in May, Amazon announced that Tile will be joining Sidewalk along with CareBand, a company that designs and produces wearable technology for people living with demetia. The new Wi-Fi protocol has no beta testing, an issue that has prompted some security experts to express concerns over potential security and privacy problems. The initiative will also be turned on by default, making it opt-out only, raising even more privacy concerns.
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