Is YOUR doorbell spying on you? Amazon's Ring let employees watch live footage from customers' cameras, report claims
- Ring staffers were reportedly given access to 'unfiltered' access to user footage
- The unencrypted videos were shared between employees on company servers and included footage from outside and, in some cases, inside users' homes
- Amazon acquired the smart doorbell company for $1 billion last February
Your smart doorbell might be spying you.
A new report from The Intercept claims Ring, the smart doorbell company owned by Amazon, allowed its employees to watch live footage from customers' cameras.
Ring engineers and executives were reportedly given access to 'unfiltered, round-the-clock' feeds of some users' footage.
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A new report from The Intercept claims Ring, the smart doorbell company owned by Amazon, allowed its employees to watch live footage from customers' cameras without their knowledge
The unencrypted videos were shared between employees on company servers and included footage from outside and, in some cases, inside users' homes.
Ring's lax security practices began with its Ukraine-based research and development team, according to the Intercept.
There, employees had access to a folder on Amazon's S3 cloud storage service, which included a list of 'every video created by every Ring camera around the world.'
From there, employees could access the footage from anywhere, according to a separate report from the Information.
Another database linked every video file with the specific customer that it belonged to.
Employees only need a user's email address to view all the Ring videos associated with it.
Ring engineers and executives were reportedly given access to 'unfiltered, round-the-clock' feeds of some users' footage. The unencrypted videos were shared between employees on company servers and included footage from outside and, in some cases, inside users' homes
Amazon acquired Ring for $1 billion last February and, since then, it has put in place heightened security measures to prevent employees from accessing sensitive customer data
All the while, users had no idea that their camera footage was being watched by Ring employees.
In some cases, employees would check their coworkers' feeds and tease them whenever they saw them bringing home dates, the Intercept said.
Ring also employed a 'video annotation team' to watch camera footage and tag objects, humans and other things in the clips so that its object recognition software could improve.
But, at times, those operations went astray as employees would reportedly show their coworkers interesting videos they saw, some of which included people kissing, stealing and firing guns.
Amazon acquired Ring for $1 billion last February and, since then, it has put in place heightened security measures to prevent employees from accessing sensitive customer data.
WHAT IS RING AND WHY HAS AMAZON BOUGHT IT?
Amazon has bought home security startup Ring for a reported £700 million ($1 billion).
The home security startup sells doorbells that capture video and audio.
Clips can be streamed on smartphones and other devices, while the doorbell even allows homeowners to remotely chat to those standing at their door.
Ring sells doorbells (left) that capture video and audio. Clips can be streamed on smartphones and other devices, while the doorbell even allows homeowners to remotely chat to those standing at their door
Ring promotes its gadgets as a way to catch package thieves, a nuisance that Amazon has been looking to remedy.
Amazon late last year unveiled its own smart lock and camera combination called Amazon Key in a move into home security.
Key is designed to provide a secure and trackable way for packages to be delivered inside homes when people aren't there.
Amazon has bought home security startup Ring for a reported £700 million ($1 billion)
Ring's doorbell could work well with Amazon Key, which lets delivery personnel put packages inside a home to avoid theft or, in the case of fresh food, spoiling.
California-based Ring first caught the spotlight with a failed quest for funding about five years ago on reality television show Shark Tank.
Ring went on to win backing from the likes of billionaire Richard Branson and Amazon's Alexa Fund.
A Ring spokesperson told The Intercept that its employees only watch and annotate user videos shared through Neighbors, its community app.
'We take the privacy and security of our customers’ personal information extremely seriously,' the spokesperson told the Intercept.
'In order to improve our service, we view and annotate certain Ring videos.
These videos are sourced exclusively from publicly shared Ring videos from the Neighbors app (in accordance with our terms of service), and from a small fraction of Ring users who have provided their explicit written consent to allow us to access and utilize their videos for such purposes.
'We have zero tolerance for abuse of our systems and if we find bad actors who have engaged in this behavior, we will take swift action against them,' they added.
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