Slashdot Mirror
'I Tried to Block Amazon From My Life. It Was Impossible.' (gizmodo.com)
Kashmir Hill, a reporter at Gizmodo, spent weeks trying to avoid and block Amazon -- and every service that is owned by Amazon or uses Amazon's web services (AWS). She went to great lengths such as getting her own custom-built VPN. Turns out, it is impossible to keep Amazon off your life. An excerpt from the report: Launched in 2006, AWS has taken over vast swaths of the internet. My VPN winds up blocking over 23 million IP addresses controlled by Amazon, resulting in various unexpected casualties, from Motherboard and Fortune to the U.S. Government Accountability Office's website. (Government agencies love AWS, which is likely why Amazon, soon to be a corporate Cerberus with three "headquarters," chose Arlington, Virginia, in the D.C. suburbs, as one of them.) Many of the smartphone apps I rely on also stop working during the block.
The leasing office might have the Hub by Amazon installed to accept packages on your behalf. Similar to an Amazon Locker, it accepts packages from any carrier and available only to residents. Works quite well for preventing stolen packages.
Weird. Who would think that blocking AWS would block the customers of AWS. What an interesting experiment.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
That's like complaining you hate your government and then complain you can't drive anywhere because you can't use the roads they built.
Now if you really want to complain, try living without Google, Microsoft, Apple, Linux and Amazon. Those companies are, like it or not, part of our modern life.
Don't ever speak outside your home. Ever again.
You'd still not succeed in fully blocking Amazon.
On top of that. Anyone using AWS will also drop in on you while trying to shop or use various web services.
Turn off data services. Shop locally (avoiding Whole Paycheck.) Done.
Of course, your business providers are probably using Amazon in some way.
Interesting article. Any US company that is so omnipresent in the lives of its customers and has an active corporate policy to crush or, at least, impede competition does indeed warrant a good look by the US Treasury Department. And I'm not a big government, anti-capitalist kind of guy by any stretch of the imagination.
All you have to do is turn your computer(s) off and leave them off. And yes, your cellphone is a computer....
Now, if you want to have the conveniences of modern life along with no Amazon, that's another story. Note that she'd have the same sort of difficulties if she tried to get completely away from the electric company....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
If she really wanted to be cut off from Amazon, or any company for that matter, its pretty simple. Buy a log cabin in the woods with no power, no internet, cell connectivity, at least 30 miles away from any neighbor. Then Amazon will completely disappear from your life. Of course this presents other problems.
Seriously why are you trying so hard to block one company or anything they touch? Afraid you'll get cooties? You want all the modern amenities there are things you'll just have to accept. I'm not saying to swallow the Kool-Aid and just go with it, just realize that at some point you are doing business with a company you may not agree with. You can minimize your contact, but you can't really prevent it. Well, I guess there is that log cabin option, but I'm betting thats not an option for you either.
What I woulkd primarily ask, is, well, why? Why would they want to simply block AWS (or let's pick on Azure/Microsoft next? Maybe Google?) without a basic answer of why. Why is this person frustrated that they are paying for Prime twice, when there's no need (with a household setup). Why are they blocking AWS just to "stick it to the new imaginary bogey-man" when by her own admission, it screws up her own digital life. Is AWS Evil? Has she confused Bezos for the villain in Austin Powers?
Why?
If she's really committed to this experiment, I welcome their move move to Amish country, where with a suitable adherence to their traditional life "blocking" Amazon should be relatively simple. After all, once you dispense with the whole "electricity" thing success at this experiment is trivial. She won't be closer to answering the original question...of why.
like blocking BookFace. Or Tumber, or Twitter.
" largest cloud provider" then goes to show how cloud services didn't work without it?
WTF
its like complaining you can't shit after you sew your ass shut.
Sorry about the vulgar language but the author clearly wants to converse in this manner.
Sounds like author had a deadline and came up with a flimsy story, that or they have some fundamental misunderstanding about AWS and think that it builds some profile about you.
What's the point of blocking services that happen to use AWS? Seems pretty arbitrary, like not hiring any mechanic who wears red shirts on Tuesdays.
If you stop worrying about whether Amazon is your vendor's vendor, and just cut direct ties with Amazon, it's not that hard. They basically don't have a single product that's any good: the tablets, speakers, etc aren't that attractive.
Their store is pretty good, though. I would miss that, but could still pretty easily do without if I really wanted to. (Which I don't!) (But I only shop there every few months; people who shop more often would have a harder time, I know.)
I Tried to Block Amazon From My Life. It Was Impossible.
Ted Kaczynski wouldn't have had an issue with it. Of course if you like things like running water and electricity. As well as not mailing hand made bombs to people, that life might not be for you.
Now if you really want to complain, try living without Google, Microsoft, Apple, Linux and Amazon. Those companies are, like it or not, part of our modern life.
that Linux is a company
Why using a VPN to block a site ? Nonsense ? AFAIK this is not the purpose of a VPN. Its purpose is to create a tunnel to give you access to the Net from another point of the planet. But from home, or from the other side of the VPN, it's more or less (GDPR, etc) web site.
If you want to prove that you cannot browse without Amazon, try the NoScript plugin in Firefox. It's a blacklist-everything-by-default policy and a PITA at first. It needs some effort to tell it which sites you trust, or need.
But soon, you'll realize that many sites won't show properly when Amazon servers are blocked.
QED ? But without a VPN.
Totof
Except the article's point is both stupid and naive. It's approximately the same as shutting off your city water supply because you're pissed at where they installed bike lanes. That'll show that pesky government!!
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
A reporter does a dumb thing that creates sensationalist headlines.
More news at 11
A tech journalist can't avoid the big tech companies due to their career depending on using the technology those companies produce.
Who would have thought?
Trying to live a modern life without the technology companies that make it possible is almost as foolish as trying to live a modern life without electricity.
Some day in the future competing governments will rent AWS time to launch cyber attacks and DNS attacks. Eventually when all government servies are on AWS, one country wil purchase AWS time to DDOS the AWS servces of the other country.
Milo minderbinder's legacy will continue in the digital age.
Unless you want to be a hermit, you can't live in the modern world without interacting with the surveillance industrial complex. The trick is to create fake identities to feed the complex in lieu of letting it get your real identifying info. Then trash the identities on a regular basis and start over again with new ones. VPNs can really help with this since it disassociates your IP address from your internet activity. I have a couple of different identies and each one has its own exit node on a commercial VPN provider.
Masking your IP address is far from the only step to using cover identities, but it is an important one. Others include unique phone# per ID (easy to get with low-cost prepaid cell plans and old cell phones that are dirt cheap) and prepaid credit cards for purchases. The trick though is to make sure you "feed the machine" the fake idenitifying info, don't try to be very private. You want them to track the F out of the fake identity and put all that info in their databases (which they trust implicitly).
Shutting off your water supply doesn't really impact your ability to interact with other people. I think a more apt analogy is refusing to use any public roads because.... reasons?
Article summary;
1. I block Amazon and Amazon AWS cloud sites
2. I discover how lazy I am - Think about the drudgery of going to a physical store to buy paper towels
3. I discover how much free data I feed Amazon - $3k+ spent yearly on Amazon.com
4. I discover how much I'm addicted to voice activated assistants - echo
5. I discover I buy most video streaming entertainment from Amazon
6. I have Amazon apps on my phone
7. I need a fitness tracker app or smart watch to jog in the park
Simply cut the cord, one by one, to reduce your Amazon footprint. Not hard to do. Go to a physical store, it will reduce what you buy since there is physical work involved in transporting it to your home.
For sanity checking:
a. Count the number of interactions via text message, email, app popup, notifications, beeps, etc per day - say X per day
b. Consider if you got that X interactions all in one avenue - say email each day
c. Ask yourself, would a sane person read and respond to X emails per day? Or read 50 newspapers per day? Or make/receive hundreds of phone calls each day?
Just because it's easier to respond to a digital interaction does not mean you need to have that interaction.
Just move to Russia, they have blocked most of AWS anyway.
Amazon is a private company. It shouldn't be mandatory to use it to access any govt service. Period.
My library uses Overdrive to lend ebooks. This ties into the Amazon Kindle app, which tracks reading more than any other reading app commonly used. Fortunately, my library also does interlibrary loans, so I can get the real books too. It is less convenient, but doesn't have Amazon.
I've been blocking AWS networks from inbound connects to our internet servers for about a decade now after they were first used to attack. Other VPS providers, most of Russia, China, and a few other countries have been blocked too. Only about 30K firewall rules today. We are a local service provider, not really interested in working outside our metro area, much less outside our state.
Outbound, we block much of Google, as much of all the social network that we can and Microsoft - microsoft.com attacked our corporate IPs around 2008. We keep the public information IPs separate from the back office IPs, even using a different name and billing/contact address.
I've found that whenever people like you suggest that something is stupid, it is usually because they have something to gain. I'm guessing you host your crap on AWS or Azure or Google's cloud or DO or one of the 20,000 other VPS providers from which a cheap VPS can be used to attack others? Yes?
Personally, I have my head shoved up Amazon's ass pretty far. I have a financial relationship with them, unlike the relationships demanded by FB, TW, GOOG, Insta-whatever, Photo or MSFT. Those companies take my data without permission, without my approval, and without me opting in at any level. There needs to be a law.
A few summers ago I was able to block Google, Amazon, and Netflix for life for just about two week. I left the phone on the counter, no service where I was going. Put the tent, the sleeping back, and supplies in the back of the car. Pointed North and drove off for some hiking and camping.
Technology doesn't have to enslaved you if you don't want it too. It's just another tool.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
You realize that by your late 30s you have been through 4 or 5 digital fads and question the validity and value of the newest digital fad and if the latest tech will actually improve your life or will become a time wasting chore.
I don't have anything amazon in my life. I don't even understand the premise
It's amazing how horrible jizzmodo is.
Amazon is a private company. It shouldn't be mandatory to use it to access any govt service. Period
Irrelevant. Over 99.999% of the Internet is run by private companies, from every last backbone link to every ISP to nearly every hosting and access service in existence.
If your only goal is to avoid "private companies" then you have already failed and will very likely always fail.
It only makes any difference what so ever when you start to pick and choose which of those private companies you are ok with and which you are not.
In other words, the issue clearly isn't your principles on paying that price, you are simply haggling over the price itself.
If you aren't a millennial that insists on what they provide. Give me a break
It shouldn't be mandatory to use it to access any govt service. Period.
Give this a little more thought. Must a government website run on government-owned servers, with traffic routed on government-owned lines? Of course not - governments can and do rent space or time in private data centers. Amazon is one of many private data centers.
My library uses Overdrive to lend ebooks.
And they probably loan CDs and DVDs and a number of other proprietary formats which require some specific company's technology to use.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Shutting off your water supply doesn't really impact your ability to interact with other people. I think a more apt analogy is refusing to use any public roads because.... reasons?
I think those other people might disagree when you come around having not showered in days because you shut off your water supply.
perhaps intentionally.
There's been a massive consolidation and monopolization push going on for at least 30 years. Companies that were broken up in the 50s and 60s have bought their way back to monopoly status.
There's several problems with this:
1. Massive increases in efficiency and outsourcing mean less jobs.
2. Constant price hikes because of a lack of real competition.
3. Enormous concentration of political power the likes of which we haven't seen since the robber barons.
I could go on and on. This is just one example where boycotting doesn't work anymore. It's why folks on the left say capitalism is broken. You literally _can't_ vote with your dollars.
The closest you could get is to try hiding out in a Nevada desert. Of course as soon as you try to use what little water they have there a mega corp'll want to sue you so they can bottle it and sell it back to you.
The time is now to regulate and take control of this situation.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
and went back to work where you likely depended heavily on Amazon in one fashion or another.
Going camping for two weeks isn't the same thing as actually living without modern infrastructure permanently. Go do that for 5-10 years and then we'll talk.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It is not that difficult to block Amazon, although it would slow down your Internet quite a lot especially videos. firefox 7280 ec2-46-51-179-90.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com 485 74,828 75,313. and https://duckduckgo.com/ and Vivaldi diagnostic data collection?
Now I just have to figure out how to live without it.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
It shouldn't be mandatory to use it to access any govt service. Period.
It almost certainly isn't. If you haul your fat ass over to your Jazzy and scoot down to the ol' office in person, someone will have the unpleasant task of dealing with you.
ZeroHedge is easier to write for than wikipedia
I wouldn't be surprised to find out that you wrote that article and need people looking at it because you're poor.
Why would anyone bother getting investment tips from a website that pays zero to peanuts to it's contributors. I know it's sad but if you want to get investment tips you need to look at numbers and not writers.
We should all go back to driving to stores with high markups and host our own servers
Nothing to see here - move on
Well I'm not 100% on board with MMT, but if Zerohedge is against it I might need to reappraise ... BTW how's your physical gold and silver looking at the moment ... and those shorts on Japanse bonds?
News just in: World's richest businessman created popular business.
[FrLz]
The problem with people like this is they love to tell us all how things should be.
I love that for years this person contributed to the problem they are now complaining about and sent clear messages to the companies by buying just about everything they had to offer. What exactly did they expect would happen?
There is little doubt in my mind that while reinforcing this behavior this person was writing bullshit articles just like this one about how people should use everything from Alexa to Amazon. Then one day this person decides to become enlightened and again they decide they are in charge of public education and write yet another article.
Good for you, you got a clue. Perhaps I can suggest that had you been spending less time "teaching" others and more time paying attention you would have got the clue a lot earlier.
Your part of the problem, you created it so just shut up and live with it since you signed us all up for it whether we asked for it or not.
Amazon Web Services needs to find a new acronym.
Because traveling on asphalt-paved road supports the genocidal, Cheney-backed, corrupt, oligarchical oil companies. There.
ZeroHedge is also a known conduit for Kremlin-sponsored disinfo.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Did you know that it takes fuel to grow vegetables!? Better stop eating entirely to boycott ExxonMobil.
Give this a little more thought. Must a government website run on government-owned servers, with traffic routed on government-owned lines? Of course not - governments can and do rent space or time in private data centers. Amazon is one of many private data centers.
Yes, but it is something that deserves critical examination.
The government in my home country keeps a non-profitable coal-mining industry alive through subsidies for strategic reasons - if there ever is a global crisis or war, coal is the only energy source the country has in sufficient quantities.
Haven't we reached the point where government IT is a strategic element and should be independent from foreign corporations? Sure the US is an ally, but in a global crisis, they'll be their own best friends first.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
This experiment shows that private companies have reached the level of governments and must therefore be subject to the first amendment.
Ah, yes, I see your point.
I think some of your worry about Amazon (or Google or...) should be allayed by the fact that they operate in Europe under a separate entity, subject to European jurisdiction. Yeah, their headquarters is in the US - but their ownership and corporate structure are global. Amazon AWS runs datacenters in Germany, UK, Ireland, France, and Sweden... surely in a crisis the EU governments would not let Amazon pull any stunts that are against the EU interest?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Imagine if our president actually liked Jeff Bezos. We'd be royally fucked. Thank god the feud lives on! Long live The Feud!
Oh yeah, and fuck Amazon!
Use the off button. Simple. You do know how to work a button?
surely in a crisis the EU governments would not let Amazon pull any stunts that are against the EU interest?
But their leverage is much smaller, and it might require force, and you might find that important know-how (i.e. expert tech guys) are outside your jurisdiction.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I could be talking out my ass, but I'm reasonably certain that the majority of technical staff at the Amazon datacenters are local hires and not Americans. If things got rocky, they would follow their government's orders. Why would they be loyal to the US? No doubt there is a lot of centralized command-and-control, but unless the system design is very poor there has to be a standalone mode if the centralization is lost. They are certainly selling it as a service that will remain intact even if other sites are wiped out.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I on the other hand spent a year trying to get Intel out of my life. It seemed like website were using servers that ran on that processor, or there was a government bureaucrat using a computer with an Intel Inside logo. It was really made more difficult, because I was working for Intel at the time.
Snark aside, why exactly is she concerned that the proprietors of a website she is visiting chose to use the services of Amazon?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
the majority of technical staff at the Amazon datacenters are local hires and not Americans.
I'm sure of that. But when it gets to the guts of some system, there's always the situation that there's only a few people who really understand how it works.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Amazon is Walmart for the web. I hate Walmart. I hate Amazon.
You can block domains for Amazon.com, AWS, s3, etc... It doesn't impact that much. It doesn't mean some of the sites you hit aren't hosted by Amazon, but a least it reduces your analytics footprint. It's not impossible, only inconvenient. I block all of it and if something doesn't work, I make a judgement call if it's worth it to allow it for 5 minutes while I do one thing, and then block them again. It takes commitment to truly ban evil from your life, but it doesn't hurt to limit what we feed the machine.
first i thought she just wanted to block the amazon retailer services, the website and their streaming stuff etc.
but then it also included AWS, for some reason. it's just a cloud provider, why does that even matter?
ok, it's a big cloud provider, but who cares, if they provide crappy service i'm sure a lot of people will find their cloud needs somewhere else, choice-a-plenty.
it's like saying you're going to block all traffic with IBM servers or all companies that use Oracle or another silly, no good reason.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.