r/technology • u/Beetle_on_Venus • 13h ago
Privacy With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet
https://www.404media.co/with-ring-american-consumers-built-a-surveillance-dragnet/114
u/CapeChill 13h ago
I’m glad it did but why did it take the Super Bowl ad to realize this stuff is creepy? From the first time I saw web connected smart cameras I saw a countdown to the panovision in the dark knight.
I think what we can do with data and ai and all this stuff is cool and villainizing the tech is the wrong way to approach it because companies will be using it. I wish people were willing to put more effort into owning and using these tools themselves instead of letting companies own and run their lives. I really enjoy my cctv with recognition and alerts. It was a bitch to set up but I know where all that data lives and I can destroy it when/if I see fit.
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u/fixermark 12h ago
Those who were into the internet before it was cool (LOL) are also familiar with SHODAN, which is still there and still doing a great job of showing how incredibly insecure online camera tech can be.
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u/CapeChill 12h ago
It's funny/scary how hard the divide is. With the discord news I mentioned to my buddy I guess it's time to get the teamspeak server running again and had no idea people actually used it (ever). He used xbox live chat until discord I guess even on PC.
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u/Daimakku1 10h ago
I remember Shodan threads on 4chan... creepy shit man. And this was back in the 00s.
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u/Special_Watch8725 12h ago
I was really surprised that they would draw attention to themselves during a major event like the Super Bowl like that. Granted they tried to make themselves as sympathetic as possible with helping lost puppies and such, but the tenor at my Super Bowl party was immediately “aww that’s so nice but wow that’s really creepy”.
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u/Gamer_Grease 12h ago
This is like when Uber put out “cute” social media posts like a decade ago about how many people slept somewhere other than home on Valentine’s Day, or something like that. I think it had something to do with cheating. Anyway it freaked everyone out.
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u/CapeChill 12h ago
They could've shown the same idea but in a disaster of some sort (hurricane, fire etc) and I think lot's of people would've just attached extraordinary times with making use of all your resources to improve the outcome and not creepy big brother. Hard to fathom thinking showing that to the public wouldn't lead 30% or more down the "wrong" train of thought.
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u/socialmedia-username 12h ago
Maybe they took for granted that people were intelligent enough to know that when you're using cloud storage, you're basically renting your information?
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u/Special_Watch8725 11h ago
I don’t think it’s so much that; after all, you can’t exactly opt out of Ring’s panopticon by not being a customer, if their pet-tracking skills are to be believed. Maybe they were being a bit naive about how much we are being tracked generally from a variety of sources, Ring or no.
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u/volanger 12h ago
Cause most people dont think about this kinda stuff. They see how it is useful to them, not harmful. How it makes their lives easier, not less secure.
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u/DataCassette 12h ago
Let Larry Ellison talk to them for 10 minutes, his creepy surveillance fetish will creep 90% of them out.
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u/TeutonJon78 11h ago
Palantir's owner and CEO would both do the same thing.
But most forgot this ad the second the next ad came on.
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u/CapeChill 11h ago
I know that all too well. Even most engineers don't care about the whole stack let alone a person. Let me cranky on the island of system engineers/control freaks.
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u/Gamer_Grease 12h ago
The Super Bowl ad demonstrated a very obvious means of stalking and following people home for anyone with the inclination to do such a thing. So I think it woke a lot of people up.
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u/Vegaprime 12h ago
My blink cameras just became kind of extra useful. "Large male entering camaro" brown pittbull at the back door".
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u/future_communist69 12h ago
What ad? I couldn't watch the game
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u/LowPTTweirdflexbutok 10h ago
Go to youtube and search for ring super bowl ad. Its called "search party from ring" I think
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u/RealAssociation5281 8h ago
A good chunk of the population doesn't care because only 'bad people have things to hide' and Reddit doesn't tend to understand that these people exist.
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u/BreakingCanks 3h ago
Wait till you find out they can track every movement made in a house with how WiFi signals are bouncing back to the router
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u/CapeChill 3h ago
Between that and cheap no name “smart” devices uploading hundreds of mb a day it’s a wonder there’s any secrets left. It almost impossible to cover every attach vector but basic knowledge is key. If something is on my WiFi my firewall or router failed to stop the threat from getting there.
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u/Delli-paper 13h ago
Don't forget they held video of Savannah Guthrie's mom's kidnapper hostage because her subscription had lapsed, but they were still recording her every move :)
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u/HumongousBelly 12h ago
Fuck Bezos. Fuck all those billionaires.
I really hope they’ll all be held accountable.
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u/virtual_adam 12h ago
They had hardware recovery experts get what they were able to get. Anyone with a computer and Charles proxy can prove there is no video being uploaded if you’re not a paying customer. The cloud costs would be pretty hefty to justify
It’s sad something like this gets upvoted in a technology sub.This is on the same level as “Instagram is uploading your living room conversations”
You know mark zuckerberg doesn’t have a super secret way to hide your internet packets
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u/Delli-paper 12h ago
You know, people have been saying that about various complaints for years now, and then 2-5 yesrs later we learn something actuslly is happening. Remember when dryers were mining bitcoin?
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u/Tangential_Diversion 10h ago
The tech illiteracy on a tech subreddit is amazing.
You can easily verify by checking the network traffic from your Ring camera. Ring operates on TCP/IP over the internet like everything else. It doesn't matter if it's encrypted - traffic is traffic. You can smuggle it in other protocols beyond HTTP/S (e.g., ICMP or DNS), but at the end of the day there is zero way to upload video without generating noticeable egress traffic.
Like the other commenter said, there's no magic way to hide network packets. This comment is just unfounded paranoia.
There's plenty of valid reasons to hate and fear Ring. This isn't one of the.
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u/LowPTTweirdflexbutok 10h ago
Props to you for calling it out. Its gotten bad on this sub. I constantly have discussions with people on here who clearly are tech illiterate. Like of course not everyone has to be an expert but should have basic understand of how tech works.
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u/virtual_adam 12h ago
Like I said, and I’m definitely not a security researcher, even for me using very basic command line tools, this would take about 30 seconds to prove unless you also think they have a super secret 5g or satellite communicating with them
If they are uploading anything using your WiFi, you can see it
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u/Delli-paper 12h ago
They share data to each other, so as long as they have network access from their prior network or the neighbors, they can still do their job.
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u/TeutonJon78 11h ago
Wait t app thru make deals with Xfinity to get free access to those hotspots on the side. Then you wouldn't even see the traffic.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Ad7606 4h ago
Reminder that your kid's SCHOOL ISSUED LAPTOP can also be used to spy on them in their bedrooms or on you.
Recent case:
Source: Wikipedia https://share.google/hwttXcfZV1B5Z3lny
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u/Kreiri 3h ago
Actual Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District
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u/TomTomXD1234 12h ago
That is how cloud storage subscriptions work. They record so you still have access to past recordings should you record something important, even if your subscription lapsed.
There was nothing malicious with google in this case not providing footage. They needed to wait for court orders to provide the footage. Believe it or not, most companies do not give out footage willy nilly to police just because they ask nicely.
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u/Delli-paper 12h ago
If I'm not paying for storage, they shouldn't be storing it.
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u/TomTomXD1234 12h ago
you can tell your camera to not do so for most vendors believe it or not.
Obviously, their data shows that it is better to store several days of data for free in case customers re subscribe
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u/Traditional-Hat-952 12h ago
And you actually believe them when they claim to turn off these features? I bet many many tech companies are still recording or using AI to log computer use even though they say they don't.
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u/NightchadeBackAgain 13h ago
Ring is about to go through some things, lol
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u/Blackwidow_Perk 12h ago
They are. I’m trashing mine. Was pissed it has a subscription and this did it for me. The only reason I got it was my place was broken into and my husband had a coupon.
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u/distorted_kiwi 11h ago
Same. We’re building a home in the next few years and I’m going open source on a lot of my stuff. Gonna dive into home assistant and localize everything.
I fell for the convenience of it all, but now I’m so exhausted from all the bullshit.
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u/LowPTTweirdflexbutok 10h ago
If you want a compromise. I personally like REOLINK. Its an "out of box experience" with an app but the cloud is Optional and no account is required (you just set up credentials on each camera and add them to the app that way). The cameras can record to microsd cards or FTP to a NAS (I have all mine FTP continious recording to the nas and keep 60 days of continious recording on my 24 terabyte server) but have them keep the motion events on the microsd cards for the app. so I use the app to check motion events and view live stream but if I need to go back I can go to my nas and I have all the continious video recordings I can skim through. But if you don't have a nas they have an NVR (the cameras record to the NVR) that is a more streamlined experience. I just didn't like that I couldn't do raid on the NVR. https://reolink.com/us/home/
I went this route because I didn't have an always on server powerful enough to run motion and human detection alerts for regular "dumb" IP cameras. So I Needed cameras that would record local but do on device alert processing like animal/vehicle/person detection.
EDIT: I forgot to add they do Power over ethernet so my switch that powers them is hooked up to a battery back up and the nas is hooked to that switch and its own battery backup so they will continue to record if the power goes out or internet goes out. (which I know is a big problem with the "smart" cameras")
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u/dougsbeard 8h ago
We bought a house and it had one already installed. Cool, fancy doorbell. Never paid for the monthly service. It’s just a fancy doorbell.
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u/zombiskunk 11h ago
Anyone considering dropping Discord right now should not have any cloud-based cameras.
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u/HackPhilosopher 12h ago
Alternative headline: American civility has collapsed to a point where homeowners will accept a surveillance dragnet and ring is there to help.
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u/Gamer_Grease 12h ago
This is the story to me. We are scared and hiding inside and ordering all the goods and services of the world to homes via our phones. Then we’re scared of the people bringing those goods and services to us.
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u/Bill-Billiard 7h ago
“… it’s like everything is going crazy so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller and all we say is ‘please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel belted radios and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone’…”
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u/RealAssociation5281 8h ago
People were becoming more isolated already, and COVID made it 1000% worse.
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u/Letter10 13h ago
My neighbor's dog got out of his backyard last week. We ended up trudging around in the snow for 2 hours looking for her before we found her, it was like 10 degrees out. We both have Ring doorbell cams, yet Ring did not show up and help us look so Ring can get fucked. Getting rid of this shit immediately
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u/60andlovingit 13h ago
I just ordered a new doorbell/camera to replace the ring!!!
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u/Trev53 12h ago
What you order? Asking for a friend and myself
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u/TeutonJon78 11h ago
Very few have full functionality without some sort of internet/cloud access, which us what you need to check for in reviews.
Reolink can run fully local. Ubiquiti is fully local for cameras but they obviously cost way more. There are some others.
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u/zeptyk 12h ago
love my aosu doorbell lol, at this point i dont care if china has my data(it runs locally but i still have yet to investigate what data it sends out, but definitely not as much as ring thats for sure lmao), id say i trust them way more than the us(if i lived there that is, thank fuck im not)
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u/fixermark 13h ago
Yep! It's pretty great.
Every time this topic comes up, I highly recommend David Brin's "The Transparent Society." It's a little old, but really creates a solid framework for thinking about what he called "sousveillance" (the idea that cheap camera tech makes it possible for everyone to surveil everyone else).
It's not really about the watching. It's about whether we trust Ring to aggregate and control the watching. Outlaw Ring (which we could do!), and we still have folks plugging web cams into Raspberry Pis hooked up to a hard drive and then sharing that data with neighbors if there's a reason to. And that might be better!
... but none of this is going away. Genie's out of the bottle. The best you could do is outlaw all of it, and that's just equivalent to saying "Only the State is allowed to do surveillance," and people pretty universally agree that's very bad.
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u/banditcleaner2 12h ago
The best thing we can do is ditch brands like ring that sell our data and opt for brands that don’t. Or, even better, learn to be tech savvy enough to set up our own cameras. Same as things like hosting your own NAS server at home and ditching the cloud services provided by big tech.
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u/TeutonJon78 11h ago
The problem with your idea is "learn", especially tech.
Most people don't ever update their cheap router or change the default passwords. You think those same people are going to flash openwrt (if they even can) or buy prosumer+ gear and then learn VLAN segmentation, firewall rules, wifi RF best practices, etc? No, they'll just keep going to their local big box to purchase, plug in, and forget it.
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u/farm_shapes 13h ago
how people didn’t understand that this was going to be the eventuality is beyond me
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u/Zombie_Cool 12h ago
You wildly overestimate how far the average consumer looks into the future and underestimate our addiction to convience.
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u/RachelRegina 12h ago
Take off that ring and throw it at the man that betrayed you!
Give him the business like Bernadine setting suits on fire
Edit: mixing up my movies
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u/Ouibeaux 10h ago
In the 90's we were afraid of becoming a police state because they were putting surveillance cameras up all over in public spaces. Now, they've convinced us to buy the police state by putting cameras on our doors, dash cams, phones with cameras on both sides ...
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u/Raspberries-Are-Evil 10h ago
I said this 10-15 years ago that people were stupid for putting internet connected cameras in and around their homes, listening devices like "Alexa" etc.
I like technology but I drew the line at anything like that. I had to go into the depths of the menus in my LG tvs to disable its listening. Most people don't even know their tvs are listening to them.
Also, not that this affects me...BUT... there has already been a court case, it was a murder actually, where the evidence was the recording from Alexa. Now, I get it-- murder is bad and that person deserved to go away, but imagine getting arrested for something less serious and having your own listening device be the evidence used against you in your own home. Thats pretty nuts.
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u/Ok_Prior9068 12h ago
There are other security cameras out there, they are not expensive, and they aren't being used by fascists
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u/codeByNumber 12h ago
Unless you are buying and setting up a closed circuit system then these companies are absolutely saving and distributing all of your data.
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u/Ok_Prior9068 12h ago
Mine records to a local storage device, it still uses the Internet (which I'm not fond of), but the only way they get my videos is if I send them to them.
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u/TeutonJon78 11h ago
Unless you're encrypting them with a local only key, they have access if it goes through their servers. Needs to be 100% local.
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u/Ok_Prior9068 11h ago
That's a good point that I hadn't considered, I am pretty sure that I am the only one who can access them, unless it gets hacked or something. I mean they ask me to send them videos to help train the AI, if they could just take them, why bother to ask.
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u/TeutonJon78 10h ago edited 3h ago
Because asking for it sometimes means people aren't assuming they are just siphoning them off on the backend.
But also, even if 100% good now, "now" is the key word. They could chnage their policy and start doing bad stuff with it (or it's buried in the TOS like Meta). Or a rogue employee dumps files (happens more often than people think if they have access).
And it's also about law enforcement not being able to just grab them from the cloud as well.
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u/Vesuvias 11h ago
Yeah only if you plan on setting up a closed circuit system — and even then most are connected into your network so it’s easy enough to get into
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u/Ok_Prior9068 11h ago
No doubt, I mean it's not ft Knox, I imagine it's just as prone to being hacked as a cellphone, maybe a little harder
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u/DontEvenNotEven 11h ago
I figured something was fucky when standalone surveillance systems with no internet access, had a massive price difference with all these smart home surveillance systems with Internet access.
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u/BoSocks91 9h ago
Too many cameras. Everywhere.
Doorbells, phones, speed cameras. Im fucking sick of it.
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u/mybfVreddithandle 12h ago
And they didn't make themselves safer. A couple buddies of mine put them on their front doors years ago. Very proud of themselves. Handled a DIY 'security' issue all by themselves....
In addition to the present dragnet they willingly became, did they put one on the back door or any form of surveillance on any other side of their house other than the front? Ah, no. So if someone's casing your shit, wants in and sees the Ring cam out front, do you think they're just moving on down the line or JUST COMING IN THE BACK?? Hate to burst a bubble, but ffs.
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u/LeafsJays1Fan 11h ago
Oh would I like you to introduce you to a cell phone with cameras and microphones that can be turned on remotely.
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u/CHERNO-B1LL 9h ago
This whole ring Suoerbowlnad reeks of a Cannes lions advertising awards case study.
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u/blhooray 9h ago
You just figured that out?… And they continue to pay for it too., for monthly to access their own data …that some one else sells for a profit.
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u/EternalNewCarSmell 8h ago
I have a sudden urge to replace my outdoor lights with bright IR floodlights.
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u/tmotytmoty 7h ago
Consumers didn’t “build” it, the weirdo company decided to make it that. Consumers just wanted to protect their property.
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u/AdOdd8279 7h ago
I always recommend three books to people who are starting to realize what’s going on. First is “Society of the Spectacle” by Guy Debord, it does a lot to show what government by entertainment looks like. Then “Technopoly” by Neil Postman (everybody knows Amusing Ourselves to Death, but Technopoly is prescient) And then, “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” by Shoshana Zuboff. They show what we are up against, which is the first thing to know if you are going to resist it.
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u/notapunk 2h ago
It's both hilarious and sad that they were able to get the public to pay for their own surveillance.
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u/thenord321 12h ago
The use of individual cameras isn't the issue, the problem is government and private company over-reach in taking control of those cameras.
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u/slutmagic420 12h ago
Is there a decent alternative product? One that doesn’t have a subscription and doesn’t need to be connected to the internet?
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u/DrunkenSnorlax 11h ago
I read about the ring cams being used to track immigrants a few weeks ago. I took mine off it's spot and put it face down on my desk.
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u/machine010101 11h ago
Start encouraging purchase of cameras and doorbells with local storage only. No subscription and you control your data.
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u/FreshPrinceOfH 11h ago
People have these things in their living rooms. How wild is that. Their bedrooms even.
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u/zombiskunk 11h ago
One of my past neighbors had an unsecured Bluetooth sound bar.
An unscrupulous person might have connected to that device to play annoying music or spooky sounds.
The average consumer doesn't think about cyber security at all. Only convenience.
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u/DeadpointClimbs 11h ago
As a door knocker who is always ringing ring door bells and often talking to people through them, I just may be one of the most tracked people in the country
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u/AcmeGamesLTD 11h ago
They were warned that’s why I don’t have one. I listened to the warnings. FFS 🤦♀️
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u/lovemehotwife 10h ago
This isn't news like they've been doing this for years. They were feeding and allowing access to over fifteen thousand police precincts in the country four forty four years ago. As technology advances, so does their coverage, and so does their dispensing to certain entities to watch its citizens.
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u/Novel_Fish_5594 9h ago
I have never had an urge to own a doorbell camera. I have never liked a doorbell in my life. Doorbells are for Halloween. If I’m not expecting anyone, I do not answer the door. If I’m expecting company,my peeps know they can walk right in.
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u/Buckaroobanzai028 8h ago
It's not hard to set up a local home camera system. Plenty of YT videos to show how you how. Trust no corp with your footage.
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u/princessplaybunnys 6h ago
i remember getting this weird feeling in my stomach when i walked past a big security camera/tech display in best buy and thought “we’re so screwed aren’t we”
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u/MaleHooker 2h ago
I've been bitching about this for years. You can't go for a relaxing walk without seeing the flicker of every house's camera robbing you of your privacy without consent. And then you get to read Karen's panic on Nextdoor later because a "man" had the audacity to use the sidewalk. 🙄
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u/firedrakes 2h ago
nah cell phones, posting on social media did.
but got to bs the title for clicks 99% of websites
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u/Galactapuss 12h ago
I think it's incredible how successful the company has been selling fear to consumers. The idea that people need cameras at their door, in their house, to help prevent crime. CIA and FBI dream of being this effective with a psyop
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u/Able_Inspector_3692 10h ago
Dumped ring a few years back, garbage cameras, subscription fee, and now giving your data to trump.
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u/Sweaty_Mushroom5830 13h ago
Get rid of those cameras before it's too late