Posted on 03/04/2016 3:00:13 PM PST by Swordmaker
New York—Amazon has confirmed it removed the ability to encrypt locally stored data on its Fire tablets, saying that customers weren't using the service.
The change comes as Apple squares off against the FBI over access to an encrypted iPhone. Apple says giving the government access would make all other iPhones more vulnerable to hacks.
But the encryption that Amazon has removed is somewhat different than the security involved in the Apple case. And Amazon made the change well before the brouhaha started.
Amazon made the switch when it introduced its new Fire OS 5 in September with new Fire tablets. But it was brought to light this week as older versions of the tablets get operating system updates.
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I picked up a Fire for use with a ham radio program. That’s all it will be used for and it will not need to be connected to the internet.
That said, it appears to be basically an engineering decision driven by technical issues with the low-end processor and memory of this model -- hardly anybody uses the encryption because it's a strain on the severely limited system resources.
No, it's not a specific "model," it's been removed from the Fire OS and ALL Amazon Tablets. Amazon has announced they are going to be adding encryption capabilities back to the Fire OS this Spring.
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