I own a Ring doorbell that has a built-in video camera that (1.) allows me to see who is at my door and/or on the walkway leading to the door as well as (2.) recording all visitors’ actions in the cloud where the videos can be later reviewed by me and I can even forward the videos to by law enforcement officers, if necessary. I also have a Ring camera in the garage where it keeps an eye on my sports car and other possessions, as well as monitoring access to the second entrance into my home.
I purchased the Ring doorbell a few months ago because I thought it would improve my home’s security by helping to identify would-be burglars as well as “porch pirates” who steal FedEx or UPS or Amazon packages from the front door. Now it looks like my belief was wrong. In fact, the Ring devices are spy devices that save video records of ME, my family members, and my visitors and make the videos available to Ring, a division of Amazon. Instead of improving home security, Ring REDUCED my security.
I don’t have any Ring video cameras INSIDE my house although many other people do. Ring employees have access to some of the most precious, intimate data belonging to any person: a live, high-definition feed from around — and perhaps inside — their house. Who is watching you or family members in your home?
Ring has apparently been violating its customers’ privacy in a pretty shocking way. A new report from The Intercept quotes unnamed sources who confirm that engineers and executives at Ring have “highly privileged access” to LIVE customer video camera feeds, utilizing both Ring’s doorbells as well as its in-home cameras.
Beginning in 2016, according to one source, Ring provided its Ukraine-based research and development team virtually unfettered access to a folder on Amazon’s S3 cloud storage service that contained every video created by every Ring camera around the world.
You can read more in an article by Sam Biddle in The Intercept at: https://theintercept.com/2019/01/10/amazon-ring-security-camera.
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Categories: Offline Privacy & Security
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