“Amazon has confirmed it removed the ability to encrypt locally stored data on its Fire tablets, saying that customers weren’t using the service,” Mae Anderson reports for The Associated Press. “The change comes as Apple squares off against the FBI over access to an encrypted iPhone. Apple says giving the government access would make all other iPhones more vulnerable to hacks. But the encryption that Amazon has removed is somewhat different than the security involved in the Apple case. And Amazon made the change well before the brouhaha started.”
“Amazon made the switch when it introduced its new Fire OS 5 in September with new Fire tablets. But it was brought to light this week as older versions of the tablets get operating system updates,” Anderson reports. “Amazon removed device encryption, but communication between Fire devices and Amazon’s cloud, as well as data stored within the cloud, is still encrypted.”
“Jeremy Gillula, staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the move is puzzling since Amazon uses a modified version of Android’s operating system for its Fire OS, so encryption was likely built into the Android system. ‘It’s concerning from a security point of view,’ he said. ‘If you lose your tablet or your tablet is stolen, any data that’s stored is readable.’ Cynthia Larose, chair of the privacy and security practice at the law firm Mintz Levin in Boston, said removing the security feature simply because customers weren’t using it sends the wrong message to users: ‘I would have preferred to see Amazon engage in some customer education about the use of the included security measures.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If you want an insecure pretend iPad, you know where to get it.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “MotivDev” for the heads up.]
‘I would have preferred to see Amazon engage in some customer education about the use of the included security measures.’ <– Or you know, just turn it on and make it seamless.
Protect people even when they don't realize they need protecting, and make it invisible so they don't even know it's happening. That's how you design customer oriented, successful, products.
How exactly did they discern that customers weren’t using it?
Amazon read all of their data, of course.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Wow…total surrender by Amazon.
Feds will favor them in any monopoly, anti-trust, price fixing issues in the future. Called sacrificing customers well being for your own bottom-line.
Who uses a fire for anything but book?
How many hacks and blackmails will it take before Congress demands that companies build the most secure computers possible?!?! Here is an idea: Congress should pass a law that requires people purchase the most secure computer products available (full encryption) for their children. If the elder does not purchase a secure device and the kid is hacked and blackmailed then the purchaser of the weak product and the company that sold the product (Best Buy, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.) should be charged with child abuse.
Great! I’ve been looking for a tablet without encryption for my financial information.
In all likelihood, the encryption would have taxed the processor to a point that it made the tablet unusable. Android does not enable encryption by default because so many Android devices use older, cheaper, and slower hardware. Last year, Anandtech demonstrated that with encryption enabled, the tested Android devices’ performance took a huge hit.
Amazon’s Fire devices do not use current generation processors. They are designed to be cheap, and use a forked version Android. The Anandtech tests showed how then-current devices would slow to a crawl with encryption enabled. With gimped Fire devices, enabling encryption would make them practically unusable. In all likelihood, the small number of Fire users enabling encryption comes from first hand experience.
Looks like Amazon has reversed their position.
http://www.engadget.com/2016/03/04/amazon-will-bring-encryption-back-to-FireOS/
Looks like the egomaniac Bald-headed midget is trying to kiss the govt’s ass again…
Amazon reversed it’s decision. Try updating this story to be fair.