Buy AWS Accounts: Buyer Beware If You Opt-In To Use Amazon Silk
Buy AWS Accounts: Amazon Silk known as Dynamic Split Browsing is the web browser for the new Kindle Fire tablet. It is design for speed to enhance users’ web browsing experience. One half of Silk is describe as nestled inside the Kindle Color and the other half is on Amazon’s EC2 (Elastic Cloud Computing) server, the muscle that makes Silk work.
When a user clicks on a webpage, the request is routed through the Amazon Cloud servers and then Amazon’s EC2 furnishes the speed to optimize the loading time for web pages. The web content is reportedly deliver in milliseconds instead of what we’ve all grown accustomed to websites loading in just seconds.
On the surface, it sounds great but when you look closer. There are some privacy and security concerns expressed about Amazon’s Silk. That may cause some consumers to pause before jumping with both feet onto the Silk bandwagon. This article will discuss the privacy concerns being express with the Silk web browser.
Users are not going directly to a website. When a website visitor navigates to a webpage, Silk gives a portion of the work load to the EC2 to speed up load time. Which means the user is connecting to Amazon instead of the actual website. Under full disclosure, Amazon admits in the Amazon Silk’s Terms and Conditions. Therefore, like most Internet service providers and similar services that enable you to access the Web,. The content of web pages you visit using Amazon Silk passes through our servers. And may cached to improve performance on subsequent page loads. If you use the Silk browser (default mode for the Kindle Fire). All web surfing will go through the Amazon servers before the website is viewed by the user.
Your information is store on Amazon’s server. Amazon will have a record of everything you do on the web. The Amazon Silk’s Terms and Conditions reveals that web addresses for web pages, users IP and MAC addresses that enter Amazon’s servers are temporarily log and can kept no more than 30 days on the servers. Amazon’s explanation is that this is done to troubleshoot and diagnose Amazon Silk technical issues.
The Patriot Act, plus privacy concerns for Silk users. Because Amazon has a cache of user information on their servers. The government could request the data if the user is under investigation. However, rumor has it the government is at odds on how they would even begin to secure a warrant for user data stored online. Further, under The Patriot Act, the government can prevent Amazon from notifying target individuals that their data is being turn over to them. And, because Amazon possess user information, it too can used however they wish.
HTTPS connections, are they still safe? If you use your Kindle Fire to view an online financial account using the secure HTTPS connection. Amazon acts as the “middleman” between the user and your secured connection. Amazon, in their defense states that Silk will facilitate a direct connection from the Cloud server with the secure connection and device user.
Any security provided to the user will still exist when going to the secure website. This means that Amazon will install a trusted certificate in the Silk browser that will allow a “middle man” SSL proxy that will accelerate SSL browsing. It also means that Amazon will have a record of the communication. But not the content since it will encrypted.
