Of every single controversial detail about Donald Trump and his few weeks in the presidency, the most incredible one could be the way in which the major tech companies have stood against him on some divisive issues, which clearly show a new battle to come between the White House and the tech world in the next four years. In fact, just when everyone thought that things were getting a bit calmer between both parties, it has been known that Amazon´s "buy now" button has been converted into an easy way to donate $5 to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is one of the major critics of the Republican.
The Amazon Dash Button Can Be Used To Send Money To The ACLU
Believe it or not, this was a hack made by designer Nathan Pryor after ordered the customizable IoT (Internet of Things) version of the Amazon´s dash button. While waiting for it to arrive, he wrote his own code for automating the processor of triggering the donation to the organization every time it was pressed. Apparently, the main reason why he did this was that he felt inspired by the idea of donating to the ACLU every single time the president made any kind of offense.
Incredibly, his idea worked, and every time Donald Trump says something that he doesn't like, he can just hit the dash button and it will be donating to this organization, from a pre-paid debit card. Actually, he made the code available for other users as well, but in addition to the fact that every time ACLU updates the donation page with new fields the code won´t work at all, there are no guarantees in terms of security, which actually explain the pre-paid debit card, considering that your child or pet can easily donate your entire bank account if they manage to get a hold of the Amazon´s dash button.
In any case, Pryor actually wrote a custom scrip which was powered by Amazon´s servers, that automatically filled out the donation page with the name, address and credit card info of the person who´s making the donation to the ACLU. Naturally, this is something that clearly represents the way in which people can take advantage of technology for their own purposes, even if the product they´re using wasn't originally made for that task.
Everyone Can Hack The Amazon´s Dash Button
Of course, everyone can actually make their own ACLU donation dash button, and Pryor actually provided custom programming for those who want to take this step, but the thing is that they should be really careful with it, given the fact that he didn't include any kind of fail-safe or error checking.
Although it can´t be said that this situation isn't Amazon´s fault, it remains unknown which could be the reaction of president Donald Trump if the dash donation button to the ACLU ends up being efficient. This is because the company´s CEO is Jeff Bezos, one of the richest figures in the world and Washington Post´s boss, he´s probably the tech leader with the worst relationship with the chief of state, especially after this media published the controversial video in which Trump said sexist comments that cost him a lot of criticisms during the presidential campaign.
