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Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues

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Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues

#51

Post by jatowitt »

charles_f wrote: post #15

> Wemo says it encrypts all communication between the app, cloud and device and takes privacy and security "seriously." Consider 1) the multiple security breaches that pop up every week, usually following quite dumb holes (unprotected elastic search, unencrypted reset commands, etc.). I have 0 trust in how these companies store my data. 2) the relative longevity (lack thereof) of these companies that still function o…

Beware. I assume that you are referring to Ubiquiti Networks. A few weeks ago, the company was caught sending telemetry on their UniFi wireless routers.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/07/ubiquiti_networks_p...

Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues

#52

Post by 9dl »

Thriptic wrote: post #50

I'm confused about the issue with Ring here. The primary complaint seems to be that users can share data with police if they want and that police can then save that data. Ultimately that's product agnostic; someone could easily take footage from any camera and show it to police voluntarily, and users could always be compelled to hand over footage of a crime with a warrant. People have zero control over how neighbors…

This is like vaccination

Why I have to vaccinate if measles already defeated?

Why I have to fear that all my neighbors send* all video to someone?

* because you do not know that "some corporation" do not sell your video feed to anyone

Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues

#53

Post by 9dl »

zamadatix wrote: post #48
3pt14159 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is different. The reason it is different is that when things like always on microphones are legal it implies that they are safe. My roommate isn't technically savvy. He works as a project manager of in construction. He's a great guy, but we didn't talk about always on mics when we first met and frereubu is right that fighting battles like this isn't the way to do it. Legislation should solve this problem.

The assumption being everyone agrees what "privacy" should look like and will be happy with legislation around that. The majority of people don't seem to care about always on microphones.

If they do not care why not ask them some mp3 with their sex scenes

Thousands subcontractors of google/amazon/ms already hear it, why you can't?

Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues

#54

Post by Thriptic »

9dl wrote: post #52
Thriptic wrote: post #50

I'm confused about the issue with Ring here. The primary complaint seems to be that users can share data with police if they want and that police can then save that data. Ultimately that's product agnostic; someone could easily take footage from any camera and show it to police voluntarily, and users could always be compelled to hand over footage of a crime with a warrant. People have zero control over how neighbors…

This is like vaccination Why I have to vaccinate if measles already defeated? Why I have to fear that all my neighbors send* all video to someone? * because you do not know that "some corporation" do not sell your video feed to anyone

That's not my point. If we want to talk about the societal impact of mass security camera adoption, fine, but that has little to do with picking a Ring camera for personal use specifically. The only thing that differentiates this from other security camera products is that it's marginally more convenient for police to get access to data if the user wants to submit it. The advice in the article is silly because it doesn't say "don't get a camera because it's helping to create a police state", it's saying "just don't get this one camera".

Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues

#56

Post by samdixon »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #34
samdixon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment reads like an ai was given context from the article and told to spit out a response.

Well I have been sick all week so I am not surprised. But no I have been on HN for a while.

I'm sorry Gian, I was having some fun at your expense. Hope you have a great weekend.

Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues

#57

Post by t34543 »

oceanplexian wrote: post #38
t34543 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have access to my neighbors ring doorbell so I can keep an eye on my home. It tells me about all the local crime and tries to make me afraid. People report door to door salesmen as suspicious. Get real. The real crime here is fear mongering presumably to sell more security products.

You don't need a Ring, you can set up your own IP cams and there is plenty of software out there. While I don't think it is necessary for everyone I've caught tons of stuff on video, including neighbors snooping in my back yard, cops walking around the property, neighborhood cats using the yard as a toilet, the county inspector doing a tax inspection, and more than one person walking up to the camera, seeing it, and…

Yes, I have full ONVIF camera coverage of my property with local storage and s3 as a backup. If something happens including theft of my NAS i am covered. I don’t want to be afraid. I do the best I can. I accept 20/20 hindsight.

Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues

#58

Post by johnpowell »

city41 wrote: post #8

Most of this tracking can be blocked with something like a pi hole: https://pi-hole.net/

I use a pi-hole at my house and I love it.

But I also realize that the 99% of the other people out there that have never heard of it deserve some privacy too.

Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues

#59

Post by dredmorbius »

smabie wrote: post #35
yumraj wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My minor kids' photos in some company's database, tagged with neighborhood data which points to where they live, correlated with what characters they like based on costumes, correlated with their age based on their height and so and so forth.. Now if the said company can connect my kids' photos with their identity based on some other database, it will have a lot more info on them to sell ads and for other nefarious p…

Do you actually believe this is happening? No offense, but what you’re describing sounds like a paranoid fantasy. Moreover, I’m sure your kids value candy more than privacy. Also your kids have probably been caught on video hundreds of times at convenience stores, streets, wherever. If you actually wanted to avoid them being on camera at all, you would have to lock them in your house and things would turn out like th…

From yesterday on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21606415

Personal and social information of 1.2B people discovered in data leak

Fourth paragraph of the story:

For a very low price, data enrichment companies allow you to take a single piece of information on a person (such as a name or email address), and expand (or enrich) that user profile to include hundreds of additional new data points of information. As seen with the Exactis data breach, collected information on a single person can include information such as household sizes, finances and income, political and religious preferences, and even a person’s preferred social activities.

Each time a company chooses to “enrich” a user profile, they are also agreeing to provide what they know about the person to the enriching organization (thereby increasing the validity of the organization’s future results). Despite efforts from social media organizations like Facebook, the resulting data continues to be compounded, creating a situation with no oversight that ultimately allows all of a person’s social and personal information to be easily downloaded.

https://www.dataviper.io/blog/2019/pdl-data-exposure-billion...

Extrapolate present AI, facial-recognition, location tracking (cell phones), voice-recognition, and integrated databases. You're already 99% of the way there.

Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues

#60

Post by CDSlice »

justinclift wrote: post #30
3pt14159 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My roommate has a phone. I didn't think much of it until he said "Ok Google" while cooking. What am I supposed to say here? I don't like microphones being always on either, but it's his phone and his home too. I can't escape the millions of cameras around the city or the constant internet trackers. We should have had regulated this stuff decades ago.

> I don't like microphones being always on either, but it's his phone and his home too. But it's also your home, and he should respect your wishes for privacy when you make them known .

Why should his desire to not have voice assistants in the house trump his roommate's desire to utilize the technology they paid for and want to use? These are both subjective opinions and neither one is better than the other.

However I do agree that 3pt14159 should talk to his roommate about it if it bugs him so that they can come to an understanding.

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