Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2023[UPDATE] Amazon did contact me directly, using what I think was a third partly, right after posting this. The approach was that I had made a user error, but that was not the case. The rep that contacted me, and left her direct line that I returned the call on, acknowledged that there was no plan to secure user data and there was nothing like this in the pipeline. This requires users to either be extra vigilante or not care about their privacy. As a former divorce attorney, I would recommend not getting this device for any parent. it allows the child to become a middle man in the divorce, let alone it completely ignores that children are not the best in keeping secrets and EVERY parent should be in on that. This thing only requires a pin sometimes, and while I like to think my daughter is advanced, she can't be the only child that can see and remember a PIN (she's 3 as of this writing and has been been able to do this for a year, but I imagine it gets worse with age). The big point is, Amazon doesn't give a darn about your security when it comes to this device. You get no options, and that needs to be fixed. In the meantime, keep this device closely guarded and do not let it out of your sight since it could cause your amazon account to get hacked.
As far as I can tell, this is a standard Amazon Fire tablet with kid apps and parental management pre-installed, with a toddler sufficient case and warranty.
As the parent, you login to your Amazon account on the device - which makes sense. How else would you do your parental management? This also makes you, the parent, the primary account on the android based device: User ID = 0. Which means for the parent, it's a regular Fire tablet.
Where this leads is that any data linked to your Amazon account is now accessible on your child's tablet. Your photos, music, files, and whatever other info you share through the myriad of Amazon services. With no apparent way to disable such access. You CANNOT log out of the Amazon photos app or disable it. The same goes for all other Amazon content.
Sure, I can use parental controls to keep my child from accessing it - but that's not what I care about. It's that it is my child's tablet, not mine. Which means if I allow my child to take this out of my sight, I am trusting my child with a significant amount of my personal data.
What happens if she leaves it somewhere? What happens if someone is able to hack it? What happens if an app in the Amazon store is malicious? You CANNOT disable access to this stuff natively and that's a huge problem.
I don't want access to my information on my child's tablet. I get that some may double the use of such a product, which I thought about until I realized what the risk was.
To be clear, I don't mind this being linked to my Amazon account - that's good. But I should at the very least be able to deny the tablet permission to access any account data that is not necessary for my child to use the device and for parental controls.
[UPDATE 11.13.2023] Beginning to see apps on the primary account not work. No third party apps installed from the store, just pre-installed apps. The problem app is Prime Music, it becomes unresponsive and doesn't do anything. The only thing the programmers got right here, as far as I can tell, is moving the work to a new thread (for those that don't speak programming, the app and home screen are still responsive so you can navigate, but nothing happens when you select music to play). It still gets one (1) start because my daughter loves playing games on it and there's no other option below two (2) stars.
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