Amazon's Silk Browser A Privacy Threat?
Amazon's Silk Browser A Privacy Threat?
Posted 09/29/2011 at 2:34pm
| by Ryan Whitwam
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When Amazon introduced the Kindle Fire tablet, the cloud accelerated Silk browser was one of the headlining features. While the speed and ease of use supposedly offered by Silk is intriguing, some privacy-minded folks are a little concerned. Since all your traffic is passing though Amazon, your browsing history could be at risk.
Silk will work by connecting directly to the Amazon EC2 computing cloud. Here, web content will be cached and compressed by Amazon’s super-fast back end, and pushed down to the device upon request. The problems start in with the fact that Amazon will retain all the URLs and IP addresses you access for up to 30 days in their cloud. The retailer will also use a certificate to run an SSL proxy, thus allowing them to accelerate HTTPS content as well.
Because all of your communications are stored, that makes the data vulnerable to intrusion, or more likely, to law enforcement warrants. There is an ‘off-cloud’ mode that user can opt into, and Amazon claims that there is no personally identifiable information in the data blocks. Do you trust Amazon on this?
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im103mike
September 30, 2011 at 11:25am
Law Enforcement does not need a warrant under the Patriot Act. All they have to do is say its a FISA investigation. With that, they don't even really need true probable cause nor does it have to actually be a foreign intelligence issue, well, it actually does, but a Judge has to sign the affidavit by law, whether he agrees with it or not and that is how the Federal Government circumvents the Probable Cause clause. Under the very broad scope of the Patriot Act, any suspicion of any domestic crime can be be a FISA issue and that is reason enough. There is no warrant, no warning, no disclosure and no courtroom. We all had better be good or else.
jgrimoldy
September 29, 2011 at 3:14pm
To answer your question, Ryan:
Do you trust Amazon on this?
No, nein, nyet, non, nyet. Not even for the briefest of moments. While I will agree that Amazon's cloud will be much more secure than others, there's no reason to trust what they say about their "off cloud" mode. They're not that benevolent of a company. As soon as it's in their financial best interest to roll over on their customers, they will.
I'd go several steps further than just using a different browser.
Cage
September 29, 2011 at 2:58pm
The device is Android based. If you are truly concerned, it's very probable that you will be able to just install another browser.
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