On Tuesday morning, America Echo users were waking up to discover that Amazon was now distributing their bandwidth to their neighbours. How altruistic of them!

The program, called Amazon Sidewalk, is ostensibly a way to ensure that all its connected devices, such as Ring security cameras, lights, and anything else in the Echo universe, continue to work while out of a Wi-Fi signal’s reach.

The problem is that the security risks it throws up are unknown.

Users can opt out of the service, and Amazon says it sent emails to its customers last November explaining how this would roll out – but a program in which a multi-nation behemoth siphons something the user is paying for, distributes it to strangers (despite the neighbourly name, you have no control over who has your Wi-Fi) and forces customers to opt out in order to stop it, isn’t going to make people happy. Not surprisingly, customers are up in arms.

There is no word if this will roll out in Australia – but I cannot see it going down too well.