Amazon faces a privacy backlash for its Sidewalk feature, some of Canada’s big banks extend WFH policies, and we’ve got some Black Friday data from Shopify.
It’s all the tech news that’s popular right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending! It’s Monday, November 30, and I’m your host Alex Coop.
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Amazon Sidewalk is launching in the U.S as an opt-out feature that the company says will connect Echo and Ring doorbells to any nearby Alexa device, even those owned by your neighbours. Amazon says this creates a shared network to help devices work better, but critics are upset about how customers are automatically being opted in. According to news reports, Amazon was rolling out Sidewalk only in the US, but some outside the country on social media reported getting an email about its launch.
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Some of Canada’s biggest banks are pushing back plans to return their staff to offices as the spread of the coronavirus continues. Bloomberg is reporting that the Bank of Montreal and CIBC are extending remote work plans for some employees until April at the earliest, while TD says most people working from home won’t be back “until at least the spring.” RBC is also encouraging some staff who had returned to the office to go back home. Setting the tone for the rest of the country, the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently went back to working from home.
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And finally, Shopify says Toronto, Montreal and Richmond Hill were Canada’s top-selling cities during Black Friday last week. We’ve got more data providing us with a bit of a snapshot of Black Friday sales, and perhaps one of the more eye-popping takeaways is the preference towards mobile purchasing. Two-thirds of all sales were made on mobile, with the remaining third made on desktop. The average cart price was nearly $130 bucks with peak sales taking place at 9 a.m.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. I’m Baneet Braich, thanks for listening.