“Amazon.com Inc. said it plans to restore an encryption feature on its Fire tablets after customers and privacy advocates criticized the company for quietly removing the security option when it released its latest operating system,” Jim Finkle reports for Reuters.
“‘We will return the option for full-disk encryption with a Fire OS update coming this spring,’ company spokeswoman Robin Handaly told Reuters via email,” Finkle reports. “Amazon’s decision to drop encryption from the Fire operating system came to light late [last] week. The company said it had removed the feature in a version of its Fire OS that began shipping in the fall because few customers used it.”
Finale reports, “Well-known cryptologist Bruce Schneier called Amazon’s removal of the feature ‘stupid’ and was among many who publicly urged the company to restore it.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Removing encryption in the first place was just a weird move on Amazon’s part. It’s good for security and privacy to see it returned. As always: Get a real iPad, not a pretend one. From operating system and app selection to performance and industrial design, the differences are stark and the price difference is well worth it.
SEE ALSO:
Amazon removes data encryption from Fire tablets – March 4, 2016
We will return the option for full-disk encryption with a Fire OS update coming this spring [after we and the government have sifted through all of your data and copied the interesting stuff]…
Isn’t Amazon one of the companies supporting Apple in the San Bernardino encryption case? Doesn’t that seem a bit hypocritical?
They probably removed it because of performance issues with their devices.