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Is Amazon.com ( AMZN ) as good at yoga as Donald Trump? The mighty e-commerce firm quickly reversed its decision to remove the encryption option from its latest release of its Fire OS distributed to tablets less than 48 hours after the news became public. Amazon is buckling under intense scrutiny following the discovery that the new Fire OS 5, delivered onto its slate computers, eliminated the option to encrypt data on said devices. News of the change comes at an auspicious moment, as a debate in the U.S. rages about whether Apple ( AAPL ) should create a tool that would give government access to a terrorist’s iPhone. Apple says that giving the feds such access would make all other iPhones more vulnerable. The lack of encryption on Amazon devices is both a privacy and security risk, so experts say. Amazon spokeswoman Robin Handaly emailed an updated, prepared statement to IBD late Friday evening about the company’s position: “We will return the option for full disk encryption with a Fire OS update coming this spring.” The company could not be reached for further comment by publication time. Early Friday, Amazon.com said that it removed data encryption because customers didn’t use it. Typically, device encryption is used by device owners to protect their data in case the the device is lost or stolen. “In the fall when we released Fire OS 5, we removed some enterprise features that we found customers weren’t using,” the statement reads. “All Fire tablets’ communication with Amazon’s cloud meet our high standards for privacy and security, including appropriate use of encryption.” Amazon’s own chief technology officer just last month gave a speech strongly supporting encryption in general. Amazon Joins With Alphabet, Facebook Amazon has already signaled it will join 14 other tech giants in filing court papers that support Apple and its fight against the FBI in its case against the government which attempting to gain access to an iPhone used by one of the dead terrorists in the San Bernardino, Calif., shootings. Other companies involved include Alphabet ( GOOGL )-owned Google, Facebook ( FB ) and Microsoft ( MSFT ). Yet industry observers have been critical of Amazon’s decision to eliminate the security measure from own its devices — at least prior to the company reversing its position. “Removing device encryption due to lack of customer use is an incredibly poor excuse for weakening the security of those customers that did use the feature,” Jeremy Gillula of digital-rights nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation told IBD via email. “Given that the information stored on a tablet can be just as sensitive as that stored on a phone or on a computer, Amazon should instead be pushing to make device encryption the default — not removing it.” The reports of the company terminating encryption have sparked debate on Amazon Web forums. Amazon is relentlessly focused on the customer experience. CEO Jeff Bezos has repeatedly frustrated investors with his mantra of customers first, profits second. It’s a strategy that has evidently paid off — at least according to double digit revenue growth, surging cloud computing sales and a company that may look impenetrable because of its market dominance. Scalper1 News
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