Give Amazon a Key to Your House and Your Car

Amazon Prime subscribers are now being presented with the opportunity to have packages delivered inside their houses and inside their cars.  With the new Amazon Key, through an application on the delivery driver’s phone, Amazon is aiming to beat porch-thieves by granting their deliverers access to unlock your house and your car.  Their primary appeal was to people who lived in urban areas who frequently ordered from Amazon and often found their packages stolen from their front porch, and because the Amazon Home Key project was so successful, they decided to do in-car delivery as well.  Now, customers can have packages delivered to the trunk of their cars, wherever their car is located.

Due to security regulations, Amazon’s car-delivery service is only being offered in 37 cities right now, and only a select few car companies have agreed to work with Amazon on this project.  To ensure security and prevent hackers from gaining more-than-valuable information, this whole process is done remotely.  Delivery drivers are given no special codes or keys.  Instead, through an application on the driver’s phone, the driver can remotely access Amazon’s network, which then grants access to unlock the car for just long enough for the package to be delivered.  Customers receive a notification as soon as their car is opened, and the car is locked immediately after by Amazon’s remote system.  While this feature is meant to provide comfort to customers that their packages will be delivered safely, there are still a few risks.

While Amazon has a very high level of security and supervision over this system, hackers still could figure out a way to tap into the system, or into the delivery drivers’ phones, and use this to steal cars and access houses.  Amazon claims that this process is completely safe, recently there have been no instances of Amazon Key leading to a robbery, but the system is still new, and there is a reason that it has only been permitted usage in 37 cities thus far.  This process is meant to provide security and comfort to customers, but you never know what hackers are capable of.

You can now give Amazon the keys to your car

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