Friday, January 11, 2019

Report: Ring's Gave Unfettered Access To Cameras To Employees

Santa Monica-based Ring, the maker of connected video doorbells, video cameras, and other home security products (which is now part of Amazon), has has huge success in appealing to people looking a better feeling of safety and security in their home. However, according to a new report, that network of cameras in your home has a possible down side: a loss of privacy, and what the report calls "dismal privacy practices" and "lax, sloppy oversight" on who can access your video streams. The Intercept reports that, among other things, Ring provided its employees with "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, and that it allowed Ring executives and engineers to access unfiltered, round-the-clock access to customer cameras--regardless of if they needed that access to do their job or not.

---