UPDATED 21:47 EST / MARCH 12 2019

INFRA

As eero acquisition closes, Amazon commits to maintaining Wi-Fi privacy

Amazon.com Inc. today promised to maintain the privacy of eero Inc. users as it closed the deal to acquire the mesh router company first announced Feb. 11.

The acquisition, which sees Amazon’s list of owned consumer items expand, drew the ire of eero users given Amazon’s history when it comes to consumer privacy. Eero prided itself on offering consumer privacy in an age where the words are next to near meaningless and in a strange turn of events, eero customers will not see any changes.

The commitment to not changing eero’s privacy policy, which includes in writing a promise never to track what users do online, comes from both Amazon and eero.

In an interview with The Verge,  Dave Limp, Amazon’s senior vice president of devices and services, said Amazon would leave eero’s privacy policy in place. He said Amazon would “not change a word” and that Amazon’s plan is to “not change anything” at eero at all, apart from “adding resources and maybe a little bit of advice here and there.”

In a separate blog post, eero Chief Executive Officer Nick Weaver said that “we want to reaffirm our commitment to your privacy head-on.” He added that “at eero, we have always believed everyone has a fundamental right to privacy, especially in their own homes, and we take this extremely seriously.”

Speaking to The Verge, Weaver claimed that “if anything, we’re just going to strengthen our commitment to both privacy and security” and that “we’ve got some pretty clear privacy principles that we’ve used for developing all of our products, that are the really the underpinnings of everything. Those aren’t going to change.”

The fundamental concern of eero users is that Amazon would use eero Wi-Fi devices to track user data as it does with every single device it currently sells. As one user put it on Twitter, he doesn’t have Alexa — Amazon’s smart assistant — at home because of privacy concerns and now eero is owned by Amazon.

In his blog post, paired the phrase “deep commitment to security and privacy” next to “Amazon shares our philosophy to put customer trust first.” Some customers, however, remain concerned about how the company mines customer data to sell more products.

Photo: eero

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