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And it ain't necessarily as easy to deal with as the news articles say. First, with all the news about a June 8 deadline to opt-out of Amazon Sidewalk before it goes into effect by default, I casually hopped over to my Android phone, launched the Alex app, went to Settings, Account Settings, and...nada. Nothing about Sidewalk anywhere to be found. Browsed all around the app trying to find the setting. Nowhere.

So I started a support chat with Amazon at 10:39 this morning. Long story short, I went through four different agents--one of whom came on for all of two minutes, posted a canned response to me, and then just left the chat before I could respond. The chat finally ended at 11:34. Here's what I think I learned...but can't confirm.

Evidently, for users of the Alexa app on some Android devices, there's a known issue with the Sidewalk settings option not appearing:

"Currently this is an emerging issue from our side where some of our customers are not able to find the sidewalk setting on the Alexa app. Our technical team is working to sort this issue out as soon as possible. I do really apologize for the inconvenience."

One agent's only recommendation was for me to completely delete the app from my phone and reinstall it from scratch to see if that made a difference. I expressed my hesitancy at doing that because it took me a long trial-and-error process to finally get all my Alexa-enabled devices setup the way I want and talking to everything else properly (three Echos, Fire TV, two cameras, three smart switches, a tablet PC, and two cell phones).

The recommendation then was to install the PC version of the app from the Microsoft Store. But don't do that. Because it turns out there is not, has never been, and will never be access to the Sidewalk settings from the desktop app.

The last agent I got confirmed that, nope, the Sidewalk settings aren't available via the desktop app or at alexa.amazon.com. Can't do it. And said, regarding the Android issue, "Our technical team is working on this and they will fix this issue as soon as possible. You can rest assured that you will see a change in the near future in an app update."

But the kicker?

"If you did not enable Amazon Sidewalk then no need to disable it. It is by default disabled."

I said that disagreed with the umpteen news sources reporting that after June 8 it will be turned on unless we specifically opt-out; I asked for confirmation.

"No need to worry. Sidewalk is by default disabled in the account unless you enable it."

So color me still confused, but I've already spent way too much time on, er, the Sidewalk. So if it squeezes in its hidden 500MB max bandwidth usage this month, I'll just watch for it in my router logs and deal with it later.