Amazon’s Ring cameras were allegedly used by employees and third-party contractors to spy on customers. The FTC has filed a complaint against Amazon, which may result in a $5.8 million settlement. Employees had unrestricted access to customer videos and could download, save, and share them. Some employees abused this access, including viewing videos of female users in private areas. Ring made changes to access rights but further abuses occurred. Ring also failed to implement security measures, resulting in security incidents and compromised devices. As part of the settlement, Ring is required to delete customer videos and data collected before 2018. In a separate settlement, Amazon agreed to pay $25 million for failing to protect children’s privacy in relation to Alexa voice recordings and geolocation data.
This is why I don’t own any smart home devices.
It’s insane that Amazon can pay ONLY 5.8 millions and walk away without even admitting guilt
Ditto. It’s for this very reason that I create my own “smart devices” which only have the ability to communicate locally inside my network. When I need to reach them, I do it via a VPN that uses high encryption and specifically tailored non-standard settings.
Trust off the shelf stuff likely made in China inside my home? Uh…that’s a big fat NOPE.
The saddest thing is that even when the general population know this, they still get them. How does this company even win?! Ughhh.
Yep. Told my mom about this stuff and where women were being spied on in their rooms and whatnot.
She somehow blames the women for having cameras in their rooms. WatUgh, victim blaming :(
I’m sure pedophiles would love that defense.
It’s depressing to think how useful this technology could be for disabled people if it weren’t always fucking spying on you. But that will never change in today’s society.
Definitely! I have elderly family members who would really benefit from the peace of mind that we can keep an eye out for them. When they get to that point, we will probably look for the best camera and get it, but it would be nice if there wasn’t a concern about random people watching the feed.
If you don’t mind going the DIY route look into ‘Home Assistant’.
This really shouldn’t be news to anyone, coverage surrounding this has been happening for quite some time, and I really don’t think its going away, people in my neighborhood still have these dystopian cameras installed, chances are they don’t care, all you can do is protect yourself by using local only cameras and perhaps wearing a hat / sunglasses like the reflectacles that will block infrared so your eyes can’t be seen, and keep conversations away from these things.
Gee, what a surprise… 🙄
Only a surprise to the people foolish enough to buy the device in the first place.
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thats very messed up, i would personally never trust one of these cloud security cameras myself, i’d either selfhost or get a local one, otherwise it’d always be a risk/blind trust.
Is anyone really surprised by this? It’s 2023, my air conditioner spies on me.
