Privacy died last century, the only way to go is off-grid - The Register [View all]

[justaprogressive]

Opinion I was going to write a story about how Amazon is no longer even pretending to respect your privacy. But, really, why bother?

What do I mean by that? Well, take, for example, that recently, Amazon announced a significant change in its Alexa device privacy policy. Starting March 28, 2025, Amazon will remove the option to process Alexa voice requests locally on specific Echo devices. Instead, all voice recordings will be sent to the cloud for processing, a move intended to support Amazon's new generative AI features in Alexa Plus.

I'd find that very scary, except, well, you see, I already reported that security flaws in Amazon Fire 7 Kids tablets could potentially be exploited to snoop on every last Amazon device in your home. With security like this, were Amazon gadgets ever trustworthy?

snip

For instance, there was the National Public Data (NPD) breach in 2024. This catastrophic incident exposed the sensitive personal information of nearly 2.9 billion US, Canadian, and British citizens. This included their Social Security Numbers, addresses, and birth dates. The breach led to NPD's bankruptcy.

Then there was the UnitedHealth Group ransomware attack, which compromised the data of more than 100 million individuals. The company paid a substantial ransom to attackers, but is the data "safe"? Who knows. I doubt very much UnitedHealth does.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/31/privacy_dead_opinion/