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Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues

usatoday.com

11–20 of 115 posts

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

#11
post #2

> "Customers have to consent to allow Ring to share the doorbell footage with law enforcement, but "once they have access, they can save it indefinitely," says Rebecca Ricks, a Mozilla researcher who worked on the report." Sure, but once the bits exit a closed network, how do you have any idea where they go? Even if encrypted, there is no way to prevent the recording of data for some future brute-force attack. Probab…

> there is no way to prevent the recording of data for some future brute-force attack Ideally, your encryption would be resistant to a brute-force attack…

What does "resistant" mean?

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

#12
post #8

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

That won’t things like smart TVs sending pictures of what you watch back to HQ

It depends on the device and whether they use your network's DNS server or their own. In my experience Roku devices are easily blocked with a pi hole, for example.

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

#13
post #2

> "Customers have to consent to allow Ring to share the doorbell footage with law enforcement, but "once they have access, they can save it indefinitely," says Rebecca Ricks, a Mozilla researcher who worked on the report." Sure, but once the bits exit a closed network, how do you have any idea where they go? Even if encrypted, there is no way to prevent the recording of data for some future brute-force attack. Probab…

Reminds me of Digital Fortress

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

#14

I don’t understand the issue here, and it frankly feels like a manufactured outrage from a minority group of activists. If customers voluntarily release a segment of video to law enforcement, so what? That’s their right. People do so in the interest of preventing crime. I don’t have any cameras myself but I completely sympathize with neighbors who have Ring cameras given the huge uptick in property crime here in the…

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.

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

#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 on investors money, which means that best case scenario your device is now a brick, worst case your data now belongs to a company the likes of Google that doesn't care (or are planly hostile) for your privacy.

My wife reaaaally wanted cameras in our house, I took ubiquity and didn't connect it to their "cloud", that's the only thing I somewhat trust

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

#16

> 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…

Do you have a smart phone? If so I have bad news for you.....

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

#17

I recently bought a house and it came with a Ring doorbell. I dont care for it. I would of never bought one. I do have additional Wyze cams though for my blind spots and the back of the house. I definitely dont ever want to see activity back there. The Wyze cams app is somewhat similar to the Ring app you can see videos people share with Wyze but thing is they have to email those videos in. Wyze says they End-to-End…

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

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

#18

I recently bought a house and it came with a Ring doorbell. I dont care for it. I would of never bought one. I do have additional Wyze cams though for my blind spots and the back of the house. I definitely dont ever want to see activity back there. The Wyze cams app is somewhat similar to the Ring app you can see videos people share with Wyze but thing is they have to email those videos in. Wyze says they End-to-End…

How do you route power to those Wyze cams though? And just so you know, they send their video to the cloud as well. I wouldn't be surprised if they send it to China in fact.

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

#19
post #8

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

Pi-hole is great, but it's not going to help if the designed purpose of the device is to send data to external servers, or if the device bypasses the network's DNS server, especially with the advent of DoH.

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

#20
post #18

I recently bought a house and it came with a Ring doorbell. I dont care for it. I would of never bought one. I do have additional Wyze cams though for my blind spots and the back of the house. I definitely dont ever want to see activity back there. The Wyze cams app is somewhat similar to the Ring app you can see videos people share with Wyze but thing is they have to email those videos in. Wyze says they End-to-End…

How do you route power to those Wyze cams though? And just so you know, they send their video to the cloud as well. I wouldn't be surprised if they send it to China in fact.

They take power from a usb plug. You can flash the camera and use it as a plain streaming 1080p camera ( you can't return it to being a Wyze cam after that though ).
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