SECURITY NEWS – Most gadgets that we have make some aspect of life easy or fun; they are harmless. Other gadgets, however, bring with them security implications; if abused, they can harm us. Perhaps the most obvious example is an indoor camera, and once again we have learned that a well-known company has been abusing the cameras in our home. Amazon owns the line of Ring cameras, and the FTC found that Ring employees and their contractor in Ukraine have had open access to view the videos from their cameras. They looked for cameras with labels like “master bedroom” and “master bathroom” and targeted looking at women. The company did not bother to track when their employees were conducting such abuse.
What can you do to protect yourself? One, remove any products from your home made by brands like Ring and Eufy who have been caught abusing their products and spying on their customers. Two, go one step further and remove all gadgets with a camera from the interior of your home; they can’t spy on you if you don’t let them. Three, if you must have a camera in your home, perhaps to watch a pet while you’re at work, then only purchase them from companies with a strong stance on security. The best company that I know of is Eve. Four, cover up all your cameras while you’re at home. Unplug them, throw a towel over them, or whatever. Don’t forget to cover up your webcam–many have a built-in privacy shutter–and the camera on your laptop, too.
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Don’t label them as such….mine are fireplace, garage, waste can, Plants,etc…duh…
The security world has a saying, “Security by anonymity isn’t security.” While labeling your video feeds with obscure titles might reduce the problem–it will also make the products more of a pain to use–it doesn’t really solve it.
Thanks for the idea.
It’s called security by obscurity and it doesn’t work. Instead you should use a wired setup with a local NVR for anything sensitive. By definition if your content is stored somewhere it’s accessible by someone. Ring was designed to secure the perimeter and public areas of your house. Wtf would you have a camera in a bathroom in the first place? And why would anyone think it’s a good idea to have a bedroom camera when they are home? I understand if you are gonna be away but why monitor yourself when your home.
Yep, an NVR is another solution. Thanks for mentioning that!
Bobby ” I had one
of them in my disabled daughters room to keep a eye on her while I was going to be gone more than a hour, but she’s was dressing and undressing after I told her not too ! I had to remove it and placed it in our living room instead ❗so I can talk her and when I was on my way home ! she has mental health problems ❗ and even though I have them all around the house and Windows garage you name it ! I have it “, and will warn you before you go any further. !! I have vivint on 24/7. I really love mine . But agree no CAMERAS inside unless you go on vacation or on a small outing… THANK you for the information…. on NVR I will look it up !! Because I really don’t understand it ! But will do my research on it… Take care..
👍
Yeah, there are situations where an indoor camera can be helpful, even if most of us don’t realize it. Thanks for sharing.
I tried to tell my son Bobby no need for cameras like that. If a child has mental health issues it’s best to check out good secure means of CVS Centralized Video Surveillance by reliable companies. You really have to be careful. I am a mental health professional.
You can’t possibly think people are monitoring them selfs at home, do you, I am quite sure that people who have cameras inside there home are using them to watch there home and there kids,
Our daughter has cameras monitoring various rooms like the kitchen, LR and BR of a vacation home. A squirrel got in when contractors were working and damaged things in the kitchen. A bear tried a couple of doors but did not get in. Bats came into a bedroom by digging out chinking between logs. She unplugs the cameras when someone’s staying there.
A rental we stayed at had cameras all over, with black bags covering cameras to reassure guests. It would not be hard to make such a bag that the camera could still see through, and it could pick up audio in any event.
People with fetishes may want to view what’s in your trash can.
Maybe it’s you that will end up in the garbage can, the rest of the world just want to protect their property and watch their kids
Really!? We need to take this proactive step so employees, “hopefully” skip checking.. Perhaps Amazon’s Ring branch, should allow viewing by unauthorized, untraceable personal.
Shouldn’t allow* or why not write your tip on their packaging. It’s called responsibility to protect your paying customers.. anyways hopefully this is covered on mainstream media.. How’s that for PR.
Hah. I like it when they so don’t use cameras from certain. Companies. Like pervs only work from certain companies. Sounds like someone push Eve cameras. Cameras work at entry points front door read door garage. .
I don’t work for Eve, get kickbacks from Eve, or have stock in Eve. I do have a few Eve IoT devices in my house, which I like. My reason for pointing out Eve is exactly what I said: They have the best privacy policy that I have seen. There are probably other companies that have a great policy, too; if you know of one, please post. Does a great policy mean that there will never be a bad actor at Eve? No, of course not. But if I have to have an indoor camera, I’d rather get one from a company with a great policy and without a record of privacy violations.
I totally agree with you, this is the first time I heard of eve and I will check into it
I have WYZE cameras and they are just for the security of my home, but as far as I know never had or heard of any privacy issues.
I’m old school to the point of not having 90 % of that stuff. The only small freedom i have in the world ~
I’m old school as well.
You leave ” my stuff alone & we shouldn’t have any problems but if you choose otherwise then, well let’s just leave this as I’m old school!”
Sure, you can point them away, cover them, etc., but they can still hear you. People say things at home they wouldn’t say in public, like telling someone a wifi password, or a phone call with a bank or credit card company, so that’s a concern as well. That’s why I’ll never have one of those Amazon dot things or anything like it. But if someone can see through your camera or laptop, they can hear you too.
I think you have a fair point. To solve, you’ll want to unplug the cameras when you’re at home.
Set them up on smart outlets/plugs and just turn them off and on by routines. Home? all off. Away? All on.
Great idea!
There’s people who have been raided by police then you got your home evasions,
Single parent that work and need to watch their kids, I’d have to say, having a camera or two in your home might be a good💡💡💡
Ehh. This just feels a bit overly paranoid. Do you, really, feel there’s any percentage in someone listening for days hoping you will say a password or bank account password out loud? I just can’t live with this level of paranoia.
If the Ring contractor was looking for bedroom/bathroom videos, i wouldn’t put it past them to write down heard passwords.
How about when someone manages to download terrabytes of this data and then run it through Machine Learning, to easily extract passwords and credit card numbers? You call it paranoia, but the reality is…. this is currently happening. But you’re welcome to be ignorant and pretend that it doesn’t happen.
Did you not read it was men looking at woman in the privacy of their own homes by employees with a perv side to them . Violating people’s rights and bodys
We live in a era when AI never gets bored listening for passwords, credit card numbers, user IDs etc. It’s like a few years earlier when one could do a Google search and find lists of Social Security numbers.
Good point. I’ll happily keep my old Arlo 720p, no mic, no speaker, 7 days of free online access.
Your so right about that ! I wonder how many people ❗ really think about that ?! That’s another good reason not to have one ❗ in house…
Hell they listen to our phone calls and stuff we say in our homes while the phone is in the room. I’ve given up on the idea of privacy.
Who puts a camera in a bathroom except perverts.
Simple answer dont fit them or make sure they only record on a device in your property with absolutely no connection to tbe outside world and the worst thing out darn WiFi disable that totally .
That is a good idea, but for some people that might not be what they need. I was recently speaking with someone who wanted to monitor their dog while they were out of the house. You need Wi-Fi and an Internet connection for that.
What did people do with their dogs before any of these “new fangled fidgets”? Also the shear number of people who have this and need this is far less than could be supported by big tech. Most people just want to watch and play with their animal and have another reason to be nose deep in their phone. Even as a tech weasel I just don’t get it.
Well what did anybody do without any modern conveniences? Electricity, refrigerators, stoves, heaters, air conditioning, indoor plumbing, doctors, dentists, veterinarians, medicine, tvs, the internet, vehicles,, stores, phones (cell phones,too.) They lived without them. Some survived without some of them. Some didn’t. I like modern conveniences.
If you’re turning smart devices on & off with a smart outlet/plug, doesn’t it stand to reason bad actors can do the same thing? 😳
Interesting point. Solution: Smart plug should be made by a different company than the indoor camera.
Actually, you do not have to have wifi to still be able to watch a pet at home. There are tons of spy/security cameras on the market like that. A memory card will also work.
Wi-Fi isn’t the issue; a connection out to the Internet is the real issue. Once a video leaves your home network, you don’t control what happens to it.
Well I don’t limit my activities to my bedroom just saying.
TMI. But in any case, better shut down all the cameras in your house.
Same. Besides that I am pretty safe being an overweight middle-aged white guy. If they want to see let em.
Republicans. Or is that the same thing?
Yes, agreed
I have all of my interior cameras connected to smart plugs. These smart plugs are geofenced so that anytime I am within one quarter mile of my home the plugs are off, as soon as I passed that one quarter mile the plugs turn on and the cameras start recording any unexpected movement. If somebody wants to look at my bathroom when there’s nobody home they can have at it. Smart plugs are cheap, you can buy a four pack for $20 often, and the whole process for each camera might take 5 minutes to set up, but once you do it once the rest of them are very quick. You can even put them in a group and have the whole group geofence so you don’t have to deal with it one plug at a time. My garage doors are even that way as well. The garage door openers are connected to Smart plugs and the only time that the garage doors can actually be opened is when I am within one quarter mile of my home, at all other times the garage door openers are powered down making the garage doors impossible to open without destroying the doors.
By the way, the one quarter mile distance was arrived at by trial and error. Anything closer to that and occasionally the geofencing doesn’t recognize that I am at home and leaves plugs on. That’s a nature of the software and the hardware doing the geofencing, specifically my smartphones.
Fabulous idea. I like! Thank you for sharing!
We have Amazon Alexa and interior security camera power on smart plugs, which I control from my phone. When we leave and lock the house, Alexa is switched off and the security cameras on. Vice versa when we return home. Cheap and absolute.
just get battery ones and point them away when you get home , guess he acts like the others aren’t doing the same thing ..the police probably have access to your cameras as well , either you want cameras in your home to be alerted to a break in or you dont
Wondering.. is there a ‘middle road? Ignorance is not bliss when one happens to be a female who lived in two war zones and was stalked right here in Australia, fur at least 12 1/2 years by a pervert in supposed peaceful Australia.
Ugh. I’ll just speak for myself. When I clicked on this article, I expected to read about *another* company found breaching privacy/security. I already knew about the Ring (years ago) and more recently, Eufy situations.
Turns out, this is not based on new incidents. It’s based on FTC findings of incidents that happened years ago (government moves slowly). Widely reported then.
So, if you have Ring cameras and intend on continuing to use them, do yourself a favor and click on that link in the article “Ring employees and their contractors” to read a clearer more complete (with dates) 6/1/2023 article from Malwarebytes.
I’m not defending Amazon/Ring at all. You decide if you trust their fixes. I also don’t use indoor cameras. I came here to find out what was the latest company to be found breaching user privacy. There wasn’t one (I mean, at least not in this article).
At least I found some interesting ideas in the comments in terms of using cameras with automations to turn them on/off.
You’re correct. The incidents happened a while back. The new news is that the FTC found that their actions were illegal, and Amazon has to pay a (small) fine. The hopefully helpful part of the article is that it gets users to think about the cameras that they have in their house and consider possible ways to reduce/remove risk.
My Ring cameras are outside, except for the one on Astro. And that one isn’t on unless I turn it on and am watching, which is generally when nobody is home. It makes a lot of noise and it’s blatantly obvious when it’s in use, so it’s not as if somebody could remotely pop up the camera to look at a feed. I don’t have cameras in my bedrooms, and wouldn’t do so except in a nursery for a baby.
Ring has remote access to equipment, so it’s likely sensitivity of listening mics can be adjusted remotely. Devices mounted *outside* can already hear some inside conversations. So, how much can devices *mounted outside* near windows & door frames hear of inside conversations?
Our inside cameras are pointed at our entry doors so we can catch riffraff as they are coming in. None in our bathrooms or bedrooms. And they are not Ring or Eufy.
My ring is towards the cat litter box. They can have a look at the cats sunshine every once in awhile. She LOVES to show it.
I’m gonna label one ” my hot, sexy wife” & when they look at it all they gonna see is my fat, hairy, & super white redneck A$$ ! 🤣🤣🤣