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Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

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Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#21

Post by claudiulodro »

cabaalis wrote: post #4

> It says three employees can currently access stored customer videos. I can't think of a legitimate reason for 1 employee at Ring to have the capability of viewing customer videos. 1. Law enforcement requests? Blind-forward what the warrant asks for. 2. Verifying service is functioning? Canary devices utilizing the normal application workflow. Login to your canary account and make sure the video is working. 3. Custo…

What about to verify that video backups/storage are working correctly, to prevent an issue like the Gandi one on the front page right now?

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#22

Post by coralreef »

izacus wrote: post #15
chrisballinger wrote: post #6

Whenever end-to-end encryption is not used, scenarios like these are bound to happen eventually. As far as I know, the only home surveillance products that use E2EE are ones that support HomeKit Secure Video [1]. 1. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210538

These kind of scenarios can happen with workers in government offices, archives and medical institutions as well. And yet the paper documents are not E2E encrypted. Maybe... just maybe... technology is not really what should be the core issue here? But we should perhaps look at our policies and legislation? Adding proper liability there will make technology come by itself. The magic of free market doesn't seem to be…

The easiest way to keep someone out is to lock the door.

You can create penalties, punishments, hire security guards to watch the door. But the most efficient and effective way is just a lock.

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#23

Post by michaelt »

cabaalis wrote: post #4

> It says three employees can currently access stored customer videos. I can't think of a legitimate reason for 1 employee at Ring to have the capability of viewing customer videos. 1. Law enforcement requests? Blind-forward what the warrant asks for. 2. Verifying service is functioning? Canary devices utilizing the normal application workflow. Login to your canary account and make sure the video is working. 3. Custo…

In an ideal world, sure. But it's easy enough to imagine how you'd end up with this situation.

For example, you have a customer support phone number, and you want your call centre workers to be able to see exactly what the user sees, and help the user do anything the user can do through the website. After all, if you're keeping your support costs down, the website should be able to do 99% of what users call support for already.

So you give your call centre workers a 'log in as customer' option. And you justify to yourself that there's access logging, and staff are under strict orders. Maybe it's before you've released any indoor cameras, and it's not like people are putting doorbells in their showers.

Sure, it'd be a sensible extra feature if log-in-as-customer was a special mode that didn't show videos. But is that really a minimum viable product? We'll put that on the backlog to attend to later.

Et voilà, your call centre workers can watch customer videos.

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#24

Post by mrmonkeyman »

teraflop wrote: post #18
cabaalis wrote: post #4

> It says three employees can currently access stored customer videos. I can't think of a legitimate reason for 1 employee at Ring to have the capability of viewing customer videos. 1. Law enforcement requests? Blind-forward what the warrant asks for. 2. Verifying service is functioning? Canary devices utilizing the normal application workflow. Login to your canary account and make sure the video is working. 3. Custo…

There's always somebody with root access to the servers.

End-to-end encryption.

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#25

Post by CerealFounder »

mi100hael wrote: post #7

I was always skeptical of cloud-based camera solutions due to privacy & bandwidth concerns, but now that those concerns are being proven true and reported in mainstream outlets I can’t imagine any reason to purchase them now. Long-term prospects for Ring can’t be looking good.

We're being sold a problem and a solution.

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#26

Post by krapp »

awinter-py wrote: post #17

At least the homeowner has a choice to upload their video to ring. Street-facing doorbell cameras on public sidewalks are in my opinion the worse problem. Pedestrians didn't opt-in. Operators of these cameras (both the buyer and the vendor) should be subject to the same legal obligations as other data collectors.

If it's public property, there's nothing to opt in to, nor is there a reasonable expectation of privacy by definition.

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#27

Post by bshacklett »

teraflop wrote: post #18
cabaalis wrote: post #4

> It says three employees can currently access stored customer videos. I can't think of a legitimate reason for 1 employee at Ring to have the capability of viewing customer videos. 1. Law enforcement requests? Blind-forward what the warrant asks for. 2. Verifying service is functioning? Canary devices utilizing the normal application workflow. Login to your canary account and make sure the video is working. 3. Custo…

There's always somebody with root access to the servers.

Encryption with customer managed keys solves that pretty easily. It also solves any ethical questions with regards to furnishing data to comply with warrants.

This creates a new problem of managing keys, of course, but that's been solved many times now in other parts of the industry.

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#28

Post by giancarlostoro »

wmeredith wrote: post #20
giancarlostoro wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wyze has End to End encryption for their cloud stuff, or you can save it all on an SD card instead. Wyzecams are also really cheap $20 but they dont have a doorbell, so for now I'm keeping Ring (came with my house) till I see a good alternative.

How is Ring better than a Wyze cam pointed at your front door? Genuinely curious. I have several Wyze cams but have never interacted with a Ring much other than pushing the bell button at someone else’s house.

I prefer the Wyze cam all out, but it's already installed so I'm just leaving it there. I don't want to uninstall it until I have a better doorbell device or if theres serious security implications in keeping a Ring device.

I'm also waiting for the outdoor / weather resistant Wyze cams that are set to come out this year, so I can put them facing the front door from the front part of my porch. I hope to have it trigger a Wyze lightbulb, though I'm not sure if they're that smart or if they need the sensor instead.

Edit:

Matter of fact, I have a window next to the Ring where I have a Wyze cam looking outside, but the IR doesn't work through window, so I'm just waiting for the outside Wyze cams to be a thing. Once I get those I might repurpose some of the regular wyze cams to do time lapse videos of the weather from upstairs. Florida has interesting weather.

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#29

Post by booleanbetrayal »

awinter-py wrote: post #17

At least the homeowner has a choice to upload their video to ring. Street-facing doorbell cameras on public sidewalks are in my opinion the worse problem. Pedestrians didn't opt-in. Operators of these cameras (both the buyer and the vendor) should be subject to the same legal obligations as other data collectors.

My neighbor, across the street, has a Ring camera aimed directly at my house, since that is where their front door faces. What is my recourse for preventing my private property from being recorded?

Re: Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

#30

Post by rchaud »

mi100hael wrote: post #7

I was always skeptical of cloud-based camera solutions due to privacy & bandwidth concerns, but now that those concerns are being proven true and reported in mainstream outlets I can’t imagine any reason to purchase them now. Long-term prospects for Ring can’t be looking good.

Marketing this kind of product directly to consumers is a fool's game. Consumers will always ask inconvenient questions like these when they're forking over their own money.

Pretty soon Ring will shift to working primarily with security and insurance companies who will bundle this into their own service offerings. The end customer will never even know what gets recorded, where it's stored or who has access.

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