It’s the reason why HTTPS and using privacy-focused DNS services are so important. With that information, your internet provider can piece together a timeline of your online life. Even when the traffic is HTTPS-encrypted, your internet provider for the most part knows which domains you visit, and when, and with that it can sometimes figure out why. Your internet provider not only processes your internet requests, it routes and directs them. The reality is that your internet service provider knows more about your internet activity than your router does.
If Eero starts asking you to install root certificates on your devices, then we have a problem. It’s only rare cases like Facebook’s creepy “research” app that forces you to give it “root” access to your device’s network traffic when companies can snoop on everything you do. Not even your router can see your internet traffic. That’s an encrypted connection between your computer and the app or website. And most do because Google has taken to security-shaming sites that don’t. And there’s nothing in there that says even vaguely that Eero can or will spy on your internet traffic.Īmong the many reasons, it (mostly) couldn’t even if it wanted to.Įvery single time you open an app or load a website, most now load over HTTPS. We didn’t see anything beyond boilerplate language for a smart router.
We scoured the privacy policy, and the most the router collects is some basic information from each device connecting to the router that it already broadcasts, such as device name and its unique networking address. That’s true! Eero doesn’t monitor your internet activity. eero does not track customers’ internet activity and this policy will not change with the acquisition. Hi Steve! eero and Amazon take customer privacy very seriously and we will continue to protect it. Eero has an easy-to-understand privacy policy, and the company tweeted that the company will “continue to protect” customer privacy, noting that Eero “does not track customers’ internet activity and this policy will not change with the acquisition.” The acquisition will take time, and any possible changes will take longer. This calls for a lesson in privacy pragmatism and one of cautious optimism. How worried should you be that Amazon flips the switch on Eero and it’s no longer the privacy-minded router it once was? Rightfully so! It’s bad enough that Amazon wants to put a listening speaker in every corner of our home. Of the many concerns we’ve seen, the acquisition boils down to a key concern: “Amazon shouldn’t have access to all internet traffic.” Now it’s to be part of Amazon, some are anticipating the worst for their privacy. A lot of people like Eero because it wasn’t attached to one of the big tech giants. Not many had much love for Amazon on the privacy front. And in case you hadn’t heard, people are pretty angry.ĭeluged in a swarm of angry tweets and social media posts, many have taken to reading tea leaves to try to understand what the acquisition means for ordinary privacy-minded folks like you and me. In case you hadn’t seen, Amazon is buying router maker Eero.