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Amazon Is Reportedly Building a Doorbell That Lets Drivers Into Your House (cnbc.com)
According to CNBC, Amazon is working with Phrame, a maker of smart license plates that allow items to be delivered to a car's trunk, to build a smart doorbell that would give delivery drivers one-time access to a person's home to drop off items. From the report: Phrame's product fits around a license plate and contains a secure box that holds the keys to the car. Users unlock the box with their smartphone, and can grant access to others -- such as delivery drivers -- remotely. The new initiatives are part of Amazon's effort to go beyond convenience and fix problems associated with unattended delivery. As more consumers shop online and have their packages shipped to their homes, valuable items are often left unattended for hours. Web retailers are dealing with products getting damaged by bad weather as well as the rise of so-called porch pirates, who steal items from doorsteps. Amazon also has an incentive to reduce the number of lost packages, as they can be costly.
So what could possibly go wrong with having the key to unlock dozens of upper-middle class homes in a delivery van whilst the driver grabs lunch?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I just don't need that level of convenience in exchange for having strangers in my home. It creeps me out more than a little. Maybe there is a market for this, but nobody I've talked to would even consider it.
Amazon drivers pilfer customers homes while delivering.
Volvo did the in car delivery some time ago with one of the food delivery companies (mat.se I think. Works like Amazon Prime Now). It is available as a feature of Volvo On Call. They introduced in Sweden in 2015. I wonder how many people use it. There is an example to learn from.
I needed a car towing about a hundred miles back home. Most tow drivers need you to ride with them so you can receive your keys back at the destination. I needed to remain where the car had broken down and a two hour tow plus a slow and expensive Uber back would have sucked.
Because of home automation, I was able to send the driver with my keys, watch him pull up and unload my car, then open the door for him to drop the keys inside, watching him the whole time, before locking the door behind him.
I was out five minutes of my time vs four hours.
Yes, âoeIOT security!â Lots of panic. Systems are exploitable. You could get robbed.
But no matter how secure the locks on a house, a thief can go through the windows. Put bars on the windows and a thief can drive a stolen truck clean through your wall.
Someone determined enough is going to get in. But theft deterrent is always about making your neighbor a more appealing target and you not worth the hassle.
IOT locks donâ(TM)t change that by any perceptible amount. There will always be edge case hacks but few and far between, not the norm. Plus I have multiple other layers of security so the door is only one small part.
In exchange, I got four hours of my life back that time and have a bunch of other similar stories of the convenience that more than outweighs the very slight additional risk.
Would be willing to break into the house as well.
The current package scam is mostly because it is quick and easy to walk up to a house, nab a newly dropped and unattended package, and get away without anyone being the wiser.
How about "not leaving the parcel wherever the fuck the delivery dude feels like"?
Before delivery, contact the recipient and establish a time window when they (or someone they empower) are home. Then go and deliver the parcel during that window.
Owner's not home? Coolio. Notify them through text or whatever and have them go to the local pick-up warehouse.
Somehow this method works very well in most of EU. In my country, the delivery company has to provide proof they delivered the parcel into my hands, otherwise I could file a claim and they would have to pay for the declared value of the parcel. I'm simply amazed this is not a thing in the USA.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Amazon, of course, is up to date with its liability insurance premiums...
Amazon Is Reportedly Building a Doorbell That Lets Drivers Into Your House
I assure you they are not.
Captcha: bugger.
The fucking delivery driver can fucking well deliver the package into my hands and fucking well watch me sign for it! No signature or not MY signature, and its considered stolen and shipping company pays within 5 days!
Shove ALL of your stupid fucking IoT shit up your ASS!!
I have never had a problem with people nicking the packages left on my doorstep. And even if I did, I wouldn't feel any better about giving some complete stranger the ability to enter my home completely unsupervised. What I do get is them just leaving a note for me to collect it from the post office whose opening hours are utterly incompatible with times I can get there, but that's not enough to make me willing to just let the driver into my house unattended either.
Either way, my preferred solution is to get packages delivered to my workplace. There's always someone there to receive deliveries and packages get put aside somewhere secure enough.
I don't let anyone in my home unattended. I just see a whole bunch of liability Amazon is exposing itself too.
What if we have local buildings that stock things. We can enter these, get what we want, and pay cash? Oh... I guess brick-and-mortar has already been invented.
Tell me, who is *SO* busy that they can't wait until the end of the work day to go home to get their package, or to stop off at the post office to pick it up? Would this terribly busy person be willing to sacrifice their home security just so they can get their latest Amazon delivery right fucking now? Jeez!
What could possibly go wrong?
"Web retailers are dealing with products getting damaged by bad weather "
I've got a house with an overhang porch covering both front entrances. Where does Fedex always put the boxes? Next to the garage doors with no overhang or protection whatsoever. UPS also put sit there roughly 10% of the time as well. USPS, for me, always delivers packages under some cover from the weather.
The distance from the garage door to the clearly visible front doors is about 25 yards. Meaning, some drivers will simply pick the easiest and fastest method available to them, not what is best for the customer, or who hired them or their employer. So even if there is trunk or house access, some drivers will simply place it where they always have, because the better protection takes too long. Getting a key to drop, unlock code, or whatever to unlock a trunk or door simply takes too long when your job performance hinges on how many deliveries you can do during your shift.
and that just with renting a car par with lots liability issues.
The Into Your House part as well.
And this can make it easier for delivery drivers to steal stuff / fake deliver just open door and don't put package in.
At least with UPS and USPS they do background checks don't hide under an network of 1099 subcontractors
As I said a few weeks ago:
What about pets? Will they make sure to keep the door closed so the cat or dog doesn't bolt? Will they refuse to enter the house if there are pets?
What about grabbing something small in the fridge or elsewhere in the house? Does everyone have 360 degree surveillance in every room of their house now?
What about disputing the purchase if you don't get the things you bought? Something missing, wrong items etc.?
What about delivery guys taking pictures with their phones while they're in your house to, off the top of my head, either shame you on the net for old appliances, dirty dishes in the sink etc., or maybe to plan a future burglary now that they have ACCESS TO YOUR HOUSE to look around?
What about just doing your grocery shopping yourself? Is the world really so stressed now we can't do that?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
I'm not going to let strangers into my home. X1000 I will never let a delivery person into my home when I am not present.
I can, however, grant permission for them to drop stuff off in a small outdoor closet that can be securely opened by the delivery man. Whether I decide to build such an addition and not fill it with junk in storage is left to be seen!
Had a very expensive clock stolen off of my porch once. I can only imagine all of the little items that would start to go missing if I let delivery people into my home when I'm not there.
All those Echo Shows will keep an eye on the deliverymen.
Not in my house!
Leave the package by the door,. let my cam catch any porch pirates. Let some Amazon drone into my house? Oh hell no. Not gonna happen.
just because people have the job, doesn't mean they deserve it
corporations are corrupt and full of incompetent but well connected upper class twits
it's called the peter principle, oh, that and, of course, the usual patronism, nepotism and cronyism
Many residences have garages with automatic doors. For a small incremental cost, one can install a remote control with keypad that accepts a code to open the garage door. A delivery person could be asked to place the package in a marked cardboard box in the garage and close the door.
As I commented the last time this daft idea came up the simple solution is to have a secure delivery box. The one time key opens the box only and this way you are only risking the contents of the box - which unless you have multiple deliveries will be nothing - and not the entire contents of your house.
Nobody in their right mind is going to let some random stranger they have never met before into their house while they are away and it will cause huge problems for Amazon because if anyone notices something missing after a delivery Amazon's delivery person will get the blame even if the missing item was accidentally lost.
Growing up on a farm in the US Midwest we had this room we called a "porch". Now it would more likely, and more accurately, be called a "mud room". It was a small unheated room on the house where one door would go to the outside and another to the kitchen. In this room was a closet for coats and boots, a large couch like bench where the seat would flip up to reveal storage space where we kept toys for outdoor play, and just generally storage for stuff of little real value. It would have been trivial to have a lock on the outside and inside doors to create a space where people could enter this room but not the rest of the house.
It seems mud rooms have fallen out of fashion and people just have the door to the outside open directly into their heated spaces. Perhaps a sign of the times of more efficient heating where the need to conserve the heat with this "air lock" of a room is deemed unneeded and inconvenient.
I'd like a house with this air lock of a room as I think it'd save energy and leave a place I could have where deliveries could be made and not left out where it could be seen. I could lock this room normally so as to prevent people from wandering in to steal my coats and boots but leave it unlocked for deliveries. If the delivery driver was kind enough to lock the door after dropping off the box then that would keep people from stealing deliveries too.
No fancy electronics needed. No unlocked doors to my living space. There is a problem of perhaps someone getting into the first "air lock" door and now having plenty of time out of sight to break into the inner door but then this is the same problem of leaving any door unlocked, put in cameras to deter this and to potentially catch anyone in the act of breaking and entering. Maybe put an electronic lock on the outer door that can be unlocked remotely, or just a simple keypad lock that allows for temporary key codes and give the code to the delivery driver.
Oh, and it saves energy too.
The idea of giving someone access to a key to open a car so the delivery item can be put in the trunk of a car is already solved with these internet connected remotes. Opening a trunk with your smartphone is a solved problem.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I will never buy from Amazon. I refuse to support retail monoculture, it's very dangerous. Besides Amazon's product descriptions are still absolute garbage after at least 10 years of operation. People complain about Walmart, what's the difference with Amazon?
About delivery, damage or return issues
;)
In fact they don't even want the items back, because that would mean they have to do something.
I think their current policy is say keep the item to the customer and depose of it as you see fit!
They then credit the customers payment, and reverse the payment to the seller who is out the item and the cash.
So it is the store owner who completely looses out.
Check this out, I don't think Amazon took the loss!
Couple admits to stealing $1.2 million from Amazon
But I could be wrong
Actually solving a problem that could be solved more easily for smaller packages. In newer developments the cluster mailboxes are locked, and there are several parcel lockers for somewhat larger parcels. So when you get a larger on the delivery man just puts the key to the right locker in your mailbox.
For perishable food there is the old milkbox from way back when milk delivery is done which is insulated. Amazon here is hung up on tech when simpler solutions are
As noted one could install a parcel locker as well. In larger cities there is an other solution for a fee i.e. the UPS store or other private mail box, where they hold the parcels until you call for them.
You better watch out, you better not cry
Better not pout, I'm telling you why
Amazon is comin' to town
He's making a list and checking it twice
Gonna find out who's naughty and nice
Amazon is comin' to town
He sees you when you're sleepin'
He knows when you're a wake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake
Oh! You better watch out, you better not cry
Better not pout, I'm telling you why
Amazon is comin' to town
But I would use the key for say a lockbox or some such.
By an armed yahoo who didn't hear the doorbell or hadn't gotten there yet and sees a stranger walking into their house.
delivery drivers one-time access to a person's home to drop off items
can be done by driving right into the person's home at 100mph to drop off say items. Unfortunately, it is also a one-time access as the car would then be stuck half way in the person's home.
Back in the early '50s (and probably for decades before that) my grandparents' house had a delivery box, mainly for milk.
This practice originated in the time when refrigeration was absent or iffy, so milk was delivered fresh, sometimes daily, by a deliveryman who typically came by before the occupants of the house were up for breakfast.
In their case the box was a somewhat-insulated compartment, about 14" by 14" by the thickness of the wall, between the outside (adjacent to the driveway) and the "mud room" (an entryway / "airlock" between the main outer door and an inner door to the living room (both locked), with closets for outdoor coats and the like.
The box was big enough to hold several bottles, and they'd stay cold until the family was up to collect them and transfer them to the fridge / ice box. If a large delivery was expected, then inner door could be left open so oversize items could be pushed through. But the opening was too small for even a child to pass through, and if someone DID manage it, they'd still end up outside the locked inner door.
Seems to me there's lots of variants that might be useful if Amazon-style delivery services become an ongoing feature of life, rather than a business model that is displaced, within a few years, by something the invisible hand pushes even harder.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The irony of this is that Amazon delivery drivers here in Minneapolis leave every package at any location no matter what. They don't take the time to call residents or the office at apartment buildings. Lots of building managers hate the Amazon guys because they drop and run. Getting them to put stuff in package lockers in buildings would be a miracle.
Source: I'm a UPS driver
I won't let random people like that into my house (and existing smart locks already have the same feature sets), but I would allow Amazon drones to drop a package into my chimney. I just had it lined with a nice smooth, padded steel liner that goes right to the bottom. Even so, they should probably wrap the package with a coated paper covering to help it slide down the tube. I wonder how the myth of Santa will change in the next 50 years. By then it'll be possible to make deliveries to everyone in a single night.
Four hours is not a lot of time for a rare event such as your tow story.
Hence the phrase "locks are for honest people". But with the Internet-based lock system (most likely running on proprietary/non-free software the user does not own and exclusively control because they bought an amazon.com kit/service) there's no way to determine who can get in by getting amazon.com to unlock the doors (leaving no evidence of a break-in).
When you're not the only one in control of your system, your system can be set up to fail at an inopportune time (for you) and in ways you can't fix. This is a risk you carry for as long as you let some organization of indeterminable size determine when to unlock your doors. Cameras recording your premises when you're away or asleep and remote-control locks sound secure and convenient until you find out how they're implemented for most people most of the time—all proprietary software-driven and therefore totally insecure.
In a way, this story is a dupe (both duplicate and a forum for dupes) because it was covered before and the underlying vulnerabilities haven't been addressed.
Digital Citizen
50 years ago, many houses had “milk compartment”, a small box within the wall, with one door outside the house and another inside in which the milkman would leave the milk bottles (and take the empties).
To this day, many apartment houses have an official postal lock whom the mailman uses to get in to put the mail in mailboxen.
So, what’s to prevent the same from being used by Amazon?
Or better, for big items, the house vestibule could be used, with another lock fitted on the inside door to prevent the delivery guy from going into the house.
Walmart Wants To Deliver Groceries Straight To Your Fridge.
In Italy you have the "Fermo Posta" where packages are to be picked at the nearest Post Office, and is mandatory for C.O.D. over a certain amount of cash. normal price for the service id 3 €, but for amazon and possibly other book stores on-line is free.
There are also the "locker" that are automatic and placed in a lot of malls that are working like this.
Book store chains are also offering the service in their physical book stores, you order the books online and collect them in a bookstore.
This is because normally on a parcel proof of delivery is needed. For smaller parcel, if you have a mailbox with a wider slot PDF in Italian It costs about 100€, when a normal one costs 20€. I think that an automatic system will cost more than a mechanical systems that by the way doesn'tneed batteries or a power supply.
This will fade into nothingness once the genius behind this and the marketing whiz-kids realize there's a very limited market that will bite on something like this.
Your sig here!
...Amazon product I have no interest in and will never buy or use, right up there with Alexa and their awful tablets and phones....
.. welcome our new home security add-on. As we all know, companies never fail with their efforts to make hack-proof and secure systems. The bigger the company, the better security right? I mean no company would ever expose millions of its customers to potential harm! (yeah, that was all sarcasm).. For the sake of having Amazon deliver a package into your house instead of leaving it at your door, would people really add this to their house?! Comparing this to a thief with a screwdriver who can break into your house when they want is ridiculous. This is a case of granting explicitly allowing a stranger into your house which is not an illegal act for them. What's to stop them from doing anything else? (not everyone has cameras inside to monitor what happens). Take something of value, rummage through drawers or stir the jug of iced tea in the refrigerator with their dick.. You'll never know (hey, you might even like your iced tea better for some reason after they also decided to take a piss into it).. If someone enters your house without your permission, it's illegal right away. If they break in, you'll notice and the neighbors might notice too.. There's just so much to go wrong with this from a technology perspective as well as the human side. It's not worth it (I don't care how much Amazon discounts their service as an enticement). Hopefully this joins the Amazon phone in the scrapheap..
"Amazon Is Reportedly Building a Doorbell That Lets Drivers Into Your House"
In other news, Amazon has been smoking crack if they think I'm ever going to use this under any condition.
Sorry, I'm just not a big fan of letting random strangers enter my home and wander around when I'm not there.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Many of them deliver to my house in their own beat up old vans that I would cross the street to stay away from. I would rather have my items stolen then allow any of these guy the keys to my front door.
"Amazon Is Reportedly Building a Doorbell That Lets Drivers Into Your House"
My front porch and living room floor aren't built to support the weight of most vehicles and my front door is only wide enough for a motorcycle.
Either that, or this story is about yet another security problem with the internet of things and smart doorbells updating their own software without permission.
Really, just an appropriate sized steel box bolted down to the porch with a padlock would work better. The owner keeps the keys and it doesn't run afoul of postal service regulations.
That's all I have to say. I live in a gated community. You deliver shit to me? You go to the gate, so that the sec guard call me to get authorization from me to enter. Then you drive. Then you knock on my door, and, unless you are delivering a fucking refrigerator or something, I'll grab the stuff, tip you and close the door. You ain't gonna get pass the door.
with the current system, if my package gets stolen, amazon is responsible. no danger to my possessions or house.
with their suggested system, it reduces risk to AMAZON, but increases risk to ME. Now I'm letting someone in my home, where my already owned stuff might get stolen.
Why is it my job to risk my stuff to reduce Amazon's risk?
I saw the first one over a decade ago. The doorbell contains an intercom. There is an IP camera focused on the door. And the door has a mag release lock on it.
Ringing the bell calls your cellphone. You can then vet the person and unlock your door remotely.
I like the idea but not $243 dollars worth of like. (Equipment cost, labor to install not included).
NRRPT/RCT
Well, as you can hear, no response..
it cant,, unfortunately, based on the content in this article, its easy to see why..
because its head is so far up it's ass, you cant hear it even if it tried..
I tell ya cowboy Neal, or Cmdr. Taco would shit themselves blind..