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 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.