If you’re sick of the security that comes with knowing it’s highly unlikely that a complete stranger is skulking around your home at the moment, Amazon have developed a new system that will complete change this.
Amazon Key is a new service that will allow their delivery staff to enter your home and drop off packages — inside that place you raise your small children, feed your dog, and keep your prized items — while you are out.
The system uses an app, a smart lock (which will come at an extra cost and hassle), and an Amazon Cloud Cam, which is an indoor security camera, (ditto with the cost and installation). A package including all these will retail for US$250, not an unreasonable price, but still a leap for many casual Amazon users.
Amazon Key will roll out across 37 U.S. cities from November 8, and will no doubt enter our market sometime in 2018.
“Amazon Key gives customers peace of mind knowing their orders have been safely delivered to their homes and are waiting for them when they walk through their doors,” Amazon’s VP of delivery technology Peter Larsen assured the public. “Now, Prime members can select in-home delivery and conveniently see their packages being delivered right from their mobile phones.”
The idea of someone entering your house while you aren’t aside, the indoor security camera, which was no doubt included to ease customers’ minds, adds an extra privacy concern – namely that a camera controlled by Amazon, uploading imagery to the cloud is a prime target for hackers.
As Amazon Key users grow in number, the ability to view inside people’s houses will prove too much for those will nefarious intentions to avoid.
Not to mention the multi-national corporation behind this invention, who are (possibly) collecting and storing video footage taken within your home.
Maybe just ask them to lean the package between the screen and the door…
