Amazon could shut down more devices after Fire TV device remotely removed, says tech expert
Amazon could remotely shut down other devices in the future after announcing that the Fire TV Blaster would no longer be working soon, a tech expert has warned.
It's probably not the most popular product of theirs you could buy, but anyone who did buy a Fire TV Blaster has been informed that the device is soon to stop working entirely.
The Blaster - which works with Amazon Echo and Fire TV devices to add voice control options - is no longer on sale but starting from 31 January support for the device will be discontinued and it will stop working altogether.
There's no mechanical fault with the gadget but Amazon can basically disable the device remotely and render it a block that does nothing.
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Cybersecurity professional and tech expert James Bore explained to LADbible that there'll be a software update coming which remotely disables the devices, and also warned that this may not be the last time you can buy something which will later be remotely switched off.
Amazon reckons the soon-to-be discontinued device has served its purpose and are pulling support for it, but Bore warned this was part of a 'continuing pattern' from tech companies and 'isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened'.
"The whole structure of how we own things has changed. Now, even if you have the physical device in your hands, you may not own it, you may not be in control of it," Bore told LADbible.
"It's fully dependent on the goodwill of a company who you paid for it five years ago, and now they've decided they don't want to spend money on supporting you anymore.
"This is, to be clear, a very deliberate design decision."
The tech expert explained that 'it makes business sense for companies to build this dependency on them' until they decide something isn't worth their continued support.
He said companies generated 'a bit of bad will when they shut it down' but it was happening all over the place with products such as online games being shut down or people's digital libraries of films and books disappearing from their devices.
Just because you bought it doesn't mean you'll have it forever.
You're not just buying something and then it's yours, you're buying something which relies on the continued support of the company that made it and if that support goes the thing you bought might do too.
The tech expert warned that buying these things meant you were 'dependent on their goodwill or the company continuing to function', noting that 'companies have gone into administration or gone bankrupt, and everything that they support suddenly becomes inoperable'.
That seems like a fairly distant prospect for the likes of Amazon, but the discontinuation of the Blaster demonstrates they have the power to remotely brick a device if they no longer wish to continue supporting it.
Amazon customers whose devices are no longer working are being compensated, in the UK they're getting £34.99 worth of Amazon gift cards while over in the US they're being offered an exclusive discount on the Fire TV Cube.
It's not just Amazon that have remotely disabled devices people bought, as Bore says a 'continuing pattern' across the sector as various companies have dropped their support for a device or it's gone because they've gone.
The tech expert suggested that if you were to 'take this to an extreme' then this pattern could result in some very significant things people can buy no longer working, including your car.
He said: "We're now getting cars which are fully dependent on cloud services operated by companies.
"So that means the vehicles that you've bought could just be disabled remotely if they decide they're no longer supporting that model."
He said such a thing 'sounds like the extreme end of it', but pointed towards the example of streaming platforms and the changes they've made over the years.
Bore pointed towards major changes to the model such as various priced tiers tied to advertising as a way that the thing people pay for can change significantly and the deal you thought you were getting when you first handed over money may not always be the case.
“It sounds extreme and I don’t like the slippery slope argument but we have been here, this isn’t a brand new slope we’re watching everyone slide down," he said.
He also spoke with LADbible about the possibility that people using certain devices like the Fire Stick for illegal streaming could end up having them bricked as a punishment.
It sounds like such an event is a very long way off as Bore said it was as 'very much an extreme alarmist hypothetical' so you probably shouldn't be worried about it happening at the moment, but he did say there was 'nothing to prevent' Amazon from doing this.
Amazon has taken steps to make their devices harder to crack and have started to introduce warnings on dodgy apps people are trying to access, which will eventually progress to making the apps inaccessible altogether.
Bore said that Amazon have 'got ways to detect that these apps are being used' and will know whose account is accessing the dodgy stuff.
"If they wanted to take it further than that, they could say, ‘well, this Fire Stick that's got your username on it has been used to stream something that we disapprove of, so we're going to shut down your account’," but as he said while they could technically do that the tech expert believes it's very hypothetical at this point.
LADbible Group has contacted Amazon for comment.
Topics: Amazon, Technology
Joe Harker