Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues
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Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues
#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.
Probably the basis for a great thriller novel.
Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues
#3> "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…
Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues
#4I 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 encrypt videos they upload to their cloud. If you dont trust them you can buy surveilance SD cards and use those instead. For $20 a pop though they are great. I only use them facing outside my house. I only put one facing the inside when out of town.
My alternative was going to be Raspberry Pi Zero W's and EyeMotionOS if anybody is interested in alternatives. Only reason I didnt get those is cause I couldnt decide on the camera to get and also I had a suspicious person (realize now they were likely just lost) stop partially on my driveway. So I bought a bunch of Wyze cams.
Another neat thing about thr Wyze cams is they shove an AI into a $20 camera to detect people. Their video on the matter can be seen on YouTube. It is impressive.
Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues
#5Wow...that Mozilla page that rates a bunch of products by how creepy they are [1] is very confusing. The first time I looked at it, I got the impression that it was telling me that Ring, for example, is rated "Not creepy!" when in fact it rates it "Very creepy!".
There are two ways it can mislead.
1. It appears that the items are sorted by creepiness, but in the table of products there is no indication of how creepy the product is. Instead, they have an indicator above the table that starts out "Not creepy!" and as you scroll down through the table that indicator goes through various levels of creepiness.
So let's say you are wondering about Ring--you are ready to buy but first want to see what Mozilla says. You go to the page, see "Not creepy!" and an array of products. As you scroll through the products looking for Ring, the only indication that the creepiness level is changing is that indicator at the top. If you don't notice that it changes, it is easy to assume the whole array is the "Not creepy!" section. Then you hit Ring, think it is "Not creepy!", and head over to Amazon to buy one.
I only noticed that this was not how it works because I scrolled to the end of the page, didn't see another array for the more creepy products, and only then realized what is going on.
2. Changing the filter settings does not change the creepiness indicator. If it is showing "Not creepy!" products, and you go change the filter settings to only show more creepy products, it shows those products, but still says "Not creepy!". It only updated the "Not creepy!" to whatever the creepiness level is for the shown products when you next scroll.
This page would work a lot better if it simply had separate sections for "Not creepy!", "A little creepy!", and so on.
Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues
#6The further down this future we travel, the less I want to do with technology. I am becoming a Luddite.
None of this crappy IOT stuff will enter my home.
Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues
#7I 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 last five years. I’m all for amazon building in facial recognition that works across their network of Ring customers and their cameras.
As for the indefinite retention - what do you think happens if you were to give the police evidence that helps nab a criminal in a non-IoT world? They store it and retain it. Why would this be any different?
Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues
#8Most of this tracking can be blocked with something like a pi hole: https://pi-hole.net/
Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues
#9I 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…
True
What problem if I (anyone) can know where are you now at any point of time, even you newer allow that
Or any law enforcement agency can arrest you even if you do nothing and software just wrongly identify your face on crime scene
And god forbid if you have not white skin color
Re: Before buying Ring, WEMO or Roku, consider privacy issues
#10Most 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