On May 31, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission issued a frightening proposal detailing some abuses of Ring technology by employees. The District of Columbia District Court noted in a filed complaint that “customers routinely use Ring’s indoor cameras as baby monitors and to monitor private spaces of the home, including adults’ bedrooms, children’s bedrooms, and bathrooms,” and, it seems, this most personal footage has been accessed without some users’ knowledge.
The FTC states that one Ring employee was able to access private footage of female users in such areas of their homes, and continued to do so “over several months.” Had another staff member not discovered these outrageous invasions of privacy, they may have remained undetected. It isn’t the first time such claims have been made of Ring, either: In December 2020, a case was brought against the company that comprised the complaints of no less than 15 different families, all of whom alleged that their Ring cameras had been hacked and, in some instances, used to speak to or even threaten their lives. The newspaper states that, in these instances, no explanation or resolution had been provided by Ring, and that the company saw users’ predictable passwords as the culprit.
May 2023’s proposal from the FTC saw the company face paying almost $6 million in refunding affected products, as well as implementing new security measures that govern staff access to recordings.
