An “Amazon Key” service is being trialled in parts of the US, where Amazon delivery drivers have a key to your home, in order to leave your parcel inside the property in a designated “safe spot”, all of which would be recorded on a camera connected to Amazon’s Cloud Cam. The US service costs $250, but presumably there would be a slight refund if you scream really loudly when you return home to find an underpaid, overworked delivery driver napping on the sofa in your dressing gown.

Amazon Key, which also proposes services such as cleaning and letting Airbnb tenants in, appears to be offering a home services deal, but with a camera, so that the homeowners would always know what was going on.

How interesting, but I have a few quibbles. I’d agree that there are drawbacks to the current Amazon delivery system, which sometimes comprises “flinging customer parcel in general direction of property” or “propping customer parcel in the doorway, in a manner that seems to whisper to passers-by, ‘Go on, steal me, you might as well’”. However, couldn’t these problems have been solved with an outside, lockable safe-box?

Then there are all the strangers suddenly sauntering around your home. Surely this wouldn’t only make customers nervous, it could also lead to Amazon workers being accused of all sorts of impropriety? As for the Cloud Cam merrily uploading images of the inside of your property, would this be similar to the cloud that kept all those naked images of Hollywood stars, such as Jennifer Lawrence, so “safe and secure” a few years ago? (And yes, I am being a tad sarcastic.) Perhaps these minor concerns need to be allayed before what sounds like an Amazon-patented Hackers’ Paradise is brought to the UK?