Amazon's decision to remove on-device encryption for its Fire tablets came under fire last week, after the updates were made public on Thursday.
Now, just a day after the controversial update, Amazon has backtracked and announced that it will bring back disk encryption on its Fire tablets.
According to a report by Engadget on Friday evening, Amazon will restore encryption to Fire OS 5, the latest version of operating system that powers Fire tablets, in a new update coming this spring.
"We will return the option for full disk encryption with a Fire OS update coming this spring," Amazon said in a statement.
On-device encryption protects the data stored in a device against hackers, or if the device is lost or stolen. It also makes it harder for government officials to possibly tap into devices to obtain personal information.
Amazon said last week that it had removed the encryption feature because "few customers were actually using it."
The decision to remove encryption drew a lot of criticism from privacy advocates as it made personal devices more vulnerable to cyber attacks. Computer security guru Bruce Schneier told Reuters that Amazon's move to remove the feature was "stupid" and called on the company to restore it.
The move drew more attention as Amazon is publicly supporting Apple's battle with the FBI over accessing one of the San Bernardino shooters' iPhone. Along with other tech companies like Facebook and Google, Amazon has filed an amicus brief asking a federal judge to overturn the court order requiring Apple to create software tools to unlock the shooter's iPhone.
