Amazon Silk Browser Faces Security Issues

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Amazon recently unveiled its upcoming Kindle Fire tablet computers. Targeted mainly at mainstream audiences who would rather read and surf than hack, part of the Kindle Fire’s magic is its super quick Silk browser. But the cloud-based processing brings in some security concerns.

What makes the Kindle Fire appealing is its focus on content. Amazon is not only selling a tablet, but it’s actually undercutting itself just to give users easy access to books, merchandise and web content. Being a low-power tablet, the Kindle Fire will bank on the use of cloud computing to pre-process webpages prior to being delivered to the screen itself, particularly with a new web browser called Silk.. Silk shines in such web applications that require heavy processing, since these will all run in the back-end through Amazon’s cloud computing network, and most of what the end-user sees is the end product.

The fact that your data is being stored and processed elsewhere is a security risk in itself. But what if you have secure HTTP connections, but with data ending up being transmitted in clear text over the network?

Amazon Silk’s terms of service actually says that the company will log website URLs,  IP addresses and MAC addresses for up to 30 days. The concern here is in case you get into trouble with the law — Amazon can easily be requested to turn over this data.

Still, Amazon Silk is not alone. Opera Mini, the smartphone and featurephone-bound mobile web browser developed in partnership with Google, itself uses a split mechanism of browsing. Opera’s servers do all the pre-processing, and renders websites in a light format that the smartphone can easily handle. The same issues are present here, too.

With middlemen getting access to your data, it’s probably best to stay away from accessing sensitive information like online banking, to prevent the likelihood of identity thefts and hacking. It’s quite likely that Amazon will find a way to address these security and privacy issues prior to launch.