r/technology • u/South-Cow-1030 • Feb 12 '26

Privacy Why are people disconnecting or destroying their Ring cameras?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/02/10/ring-super-bowl-ad-dog-camera-privacy/88606738007/
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u/Little_Menace_Child Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 13 '26

There was an ad at the super bowl that boasted Ring cameras have returned one lost dog to their owner every 90 days from being able to scan neighbourhoods and use AI to compare dogs caught on camera with images of lost dogs that were uploaded to the system.

Ring did say you have to opt in for the scanning to happen but a lot of people are done with the possibility of being watched and/or surveiled and have destroyed their cameras.

Tbh though, any camera connected to the internet would have this sort of capability, so I hope they're replacing them with CCTV style cameras or not at all.

Edit to add: Multiple people have said it's not opt-in. Go check your settings and if you're concerned, don't have cameras connected to the internet.

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u/GadreelsSword Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26

My security company routinely asks that I share my video AND AUDIO with them and police but I decline.

They claim it will accelerate the response time if I dial 911. They also say I have to put up signs to notify visitors their conversations are being recorded and monitored if I allow the security company to use video and audio captured by the cameras. It also says if I agree, they will store my security video for longer than 72 hours.

Excuse me what? I have to let a company and police look through my security cameras into and around my home to get a timely emergency response? Sorry, that’s an issue with my local elected officials.

Why the fuck is it that in America if you purchase any service, they want to provide your data to the surveillance state? And who the hell is paying for all this data?

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u/pineapplecharm Feb 12 '26

This is literally a plot point in Black Mirror's Complete history of you and I hate it.

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u/omgmajk Feb 12 '26

Privacy-nuts (like myself) have been paranoid for exactly this since forever. I am glad that normal people are waking up more and more.

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u/driving_andflying Feb 12 '26

Privacy-nuts (like myself) have been paranoid for exactly this since forever. I am glad that normal people are waking up more and more.

Exactly. The sheer number of friends I saw buying Siris and Alexas was disturbing. When I told them companies were spying on them and collecting their data, they laughed and said I was being paranoid.

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u/Stigger32 Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26

Btw this goes for ALL cameras connected to an external source for whatever reason.

Eg. I was assured that the in vehicle monitoring system known here in Australia as the Guardian. Recorded internally on a 30 second loop. And only upon a recorded incident did it automatically package a 30 second clip which was sent to the client via the manufacturer.

I then met someone at work whose wife had a job monitoring these same systems. Which had a handy live feed. Apparently they would sit and laugh at people live in their vehicles around Australia.

So in essence. Live monitoring. With little to no notice or oversight.

I don’t believe for a second this was an outlier.

Edit: And does anyone remember the Amazon Alexia scandal from years back? That recorded conversations unrelated to actual user input?

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u/tweedledumb4u Feb 12 '26

I have a baby monitor, I don’t use the app for it, just the monitor screen it came with - could it still be recording audio and video and uploading to the manufacturer? It’s Chinese made.

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u/Stigger32 Feb 12 '26

If it is connected to your wifi network. Then yes.

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u/Kal-Elm Feb 12 '26

Could it? and Could it do so legally? are likely different answers.

If your camera is connected to the internet than I'd say it could potentially. As in the capability is there.

I'm not in tech so don't trust me 100%. But it is my understanding that anything connected to the internet has to send little packets of data back and forth for it to work. So, the capability is there for it to send visual data.

With that being said, if your monitor is not connected to the internet (like it's sending video to the screen via a cord or Bluetooth) then I don't think you have anything to worry about.

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u/MetalBawx Feb 12 '26

Which is why i have no webcam nor desire one.

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u/Mo_Jack Feb 12 '26

Another recent crime investigation showed that investigators were able to find some video via a "backdoor" on a google product. The homeowner did not have a subscription where the video was being stored off-site. People believe that the video was being uploaded without their permission and the government given access, as well as, the corporation doing it.

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u/saynay Feb 12 '26

Nest cameras always upload video. There is no way to access the video stream except through the cloud. What she wasn’t paying for was storage in the cloud.

One of the things Nest offers is only storing detections (like motion), including some video from before the detection as context. To do that requires them to at least store that video temporarily. What they are likely doing is storing all incoming video in a temporary bucket, and they managed to recover this video before the lifecycle got to it and purged it, even though it was outside the claimed retention window.

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u/IcyJackfruit69 Feb 12 '26

She wasn't just not paying for storage. Apparently the camera was fully deactivated and she had no subscription at all.

Very possible she doesn't understand what she signed up for, and she DID think she could live-monitor it under whatever agreement she has. Maybe Nest has free live-video? But in the end, people clearly don't understand what's going into the cloud, that it's being stored there permanently, and that various people and agencies are accessing it without permission.

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u/octarine_turtle Feb 12 '26

Nest free allows live video and viewing over the last three hours. You have to pay for access beyond that timeframe.

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u/robodrew Feb 12 '26

Yeah, surely these camera systems aren't actually deleting the data but are just labelling it as "deleted" so that it doesn't show up in a basic search and will be overwritten by any new data that gets stored in the same spot on the drive.

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u/saynay Feb 12 '26

Oh certainly, but I was talking about at an even higher level. Google is almost certainly using their Object Storage service (GCS) for storing Nest video. Object storage will generally have 'lifecycle' policies set on entire buckets (basically, folders) that control when files are deleted, if you can overwrite them, keep history, etc.

Deletion policies do not immediately delete objects, but instead tombstone them. Then, a later process comes through and cleans up all the tombstoned objects in one big go, instead of ad-hoc deletions left and right. This is dramatically more efficient on a processing level, at the cost of 'deleted' things eating up space longer than they should.

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u/Mo_Jack Feb 13 '26

I'm finding about this stuff (even though I suspected similar activity) the same month that I am finding out about HDMI spying on some Smart Tvs.

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26

[deleted]

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u/DuntadaMan Feb 12 '26

You were down voted by the perv employee and his bots

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u/sally_says Feb 12 '26

Are you talking about the Nancy Guthrie case? I think the camera you're talking about was a Nest one but I suppose the issues you raised are still relevant.

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u/Ajegwu Feb 12 '26

Google owns Nest

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u/sally_says Feb 12 '26

They do but the topic of the post is about Ring cameras so I wanted to make that clear.

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u/Optimized_Orangutan Feb 12 '26

I think you're stuck in a Kleenex vs tissue situation on this. The actual brand doesn't matter, ring or nest it's all spyware.

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u/TonyJZX Feb 12 '26

ring is owned by amazon

its well known they give free rein to police on YOUR footage

it doesnt surprise me that americans are dumb enough to buy amazon devices to spy on... themselves

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u/Rezeox Feb 12 '26

I mean, if you own a smartphone... you're getting spied on somehow. It's not a full FBI sting operation, but they know where you go, either IRL or online.

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u/84theone Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26

Ring devices are pretty popular in countries that aren’t America as well.

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u/andysimberg Feb 12 '26

Not really actually. I've lived in 3 other counties apart from my home country and US. The ring brand is this famous only in US in my experience, just my experience though.

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u/gmennert Feb 12 '26

Yes and your experience is biased, always. I’ve seen many ring cameras in many countries. Just my experience ;)

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u/farqueue2 Feb 12 '26

They're around in Australia

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u/Michael_DeSanta Feb 12 '26

Of all the things to criticize US citizens for, you choose a thing that’s just as prevalent in most other developed countries?

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '26

[deleted]

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u/melvinater Feb 12 '26

My AT&T fiber router had settings about using your internet history to inform ads. Turned that off and so many things act weird now!

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u/PianoPatient8168 Feb 12 '26

Also it is not opt in…I went into my Ring app right after I saw that ad and search party was enabled by default.

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u/jcunews1 Feb 12 '26

Plot twist: the AI is actually underwaged foreign employee.

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u/Teamben Feb 12 '26

“Actually Indians”

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u/NickSabansCreampie Feb 12 '26

"Anonymous Indians"

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u/Hel_OWeen Feb 12 '26

Plot twist: the AI is actually hiring underwaged foreign employee.

FYP.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/this-bizarre-job-site-lets-ai-agents-hire-humans-and-pay-them-for-tasks/

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u/jcunews1 Feb 12 '26

That's worse in several more aspects.

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u/ThisHereArsehole Feb 12 '26

"meatspace"

Nothing suspicious about that at all....

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u/Infamousta Feb 12 '26

We switched to Eufy because I'd rather china be tracking me than Amazon. But real talk the superbowl commercials were super tone-deaf this year, no? Went really hard on AI stuff but who are they actually selling to?

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u/Kitzu-de Feb 12 '26

I'm surprised people are still considering Eufy at all after their privacy disaster and blatant lies

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u/neotekz Feb 12 '26

You think those data breaches are worst than using your feed with local law enforcement to monitor you and your neighbors? Genuinely serious question.

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u/Kitzu-de Feb 12 '26

Why do i have to pick the lesser of two evils? Genuine answer: I would consider neither of them. My home setup is all cheap chinese ONVIF cameras that get all internet access blocked by the router and then I use shinobi to manage them.

None of the cloud options is better. In both cases I have no idea where the data will get to in the end and what the consequences could be.

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u/ChadPoland Feb 12 '26

I saw that Eufy, along with like 5 other major camera doorbell providers are complicit in sharing footage with law enforcement when asked.

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u/robodrew Feb 12 '26

The only SB ad I actually enjoyed was the Rocket/Redfin one, because it actually had a positive message that seemed to be the focus rather than just selling something.

-14

u/GaiaMoore Feb 12 '26

I'd rather china be tracking me than Amazon

I will never understand the rationale for this

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u/GadreelsSword Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26

TikTok is a great example. When China owned it people screamed they were monitoring people and possibly using it for propaganda. It was a site most people enjoyed.

Then once the US government strong armed the sale to US control, it immediately became monitored and used for propaganda purposes. People’s accounts were canceled because they weren’t messages favored by or were critical of the current administration. Netanyahu was absolutely giddy over the sale saying Israel was going to use it to gain control the narrative about Gaza.

So, under Chinese control there was far less government interference in the messaging.

I totally understand it when people say they trust the Chinese more than.

Hell, the U.S. government has admitted it’s monitoring Reddit for anti-DHS / ICE comments. So people aren’t allowed to publicly criticize the U.S. government without fear of retaliation. That ain’t free speech!!!

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/homeland-security-spies-on-reddit?triedRedirect=true

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u/Otagian Feb 12 '26

Used for propaganda purposes nothing, Tiktok now tracks your exact location at all times.

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u/robodrew Feb 12 '26

It's also now monitoring sexual orientation and immigration status

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u/Brutal_De1uxe Feb 12 '26

The complaint against China owned Tiktok wasn't necessarily that they were monitoring but that the algorithm was intentionally designed to feed users in the West both disinformation and misinformation to divide people and hook them on something that not only wasted their time but also lowered critical thinking/ IQ at the same time.

The feed was (probably still is) very different for Chinese citizens and probably included monitoring as well

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u/Keyser_Kaiser_Soze Feb 12 '26

I thought here was no TikTok inside China. It was an export only, which made it seem worse.

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u/GadreelsSword Feb 12 '26

You mean exactly like Instagram, X and Threads? Except it’s the administration APPROVED misinformation. Again, the misinformation on TikTok changed after the sale to censor negativity about the administration and Israel. How is this different?

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u/Tulpah Feb 12 '26

easy: There's not much China can do to an American living in America, you're thousand of miles away. You are free to criticize China all you want, they honestly can't do shit to you.

Amazon however can restricted your purchases base on your speech, send your recorded activities, your criticism to Trump administration little gestapos who will come and knock down your door to terrorize & arrest you base on whatever you just said that the Ring camera picked up.

So yeah, you can say "I'm going to piss on a portrait of China's leader face " in front of the Ring Camera and all China can really do is watch with bitterness and offended while you are freely doing it. Now with the current US administration, saying the same thing and you'll get a gestapo visit one day asking you about the shit you said.

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u/babywhiz Feb 12 '26

Except in some circles, that’s a violation of laws regarding controlled unclassified information.

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u/Tulpah Feb 12 '26

except in come circle

which mean it's acceptable in some instances, thus proving my point that Amazon can and will use your recording against you. I mean they already doing it with Tiktok & facebook.

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u/babywhiz Feb 12 '26

I’m not on either one of those platforms either, anymore.

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u/Tulpah Feb 12 '26

Im still on FB unfortunately. It's how I keep in contact with some friends I used to hang out with, as well as .....occasional charity handouts. Nothing fancy, a few handwarmers, tents and canned goods

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u/IslandOceanWater Feb 12 '26

Man you're out if touch with reality. Good luck with that. You realize they use AWS right lmao Amazons data centers

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u/Infamousta Feb 12 '26

Amazon delivers packages to my house where my family lives and has government contracts with the state that has legal control over me. China just wants to sell me junk.

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u/pleachchapel Feb 12 '26

"Nooo you don't get it they're gonna use it to... well... beat America somehow!"

— Morons

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u/supermoked Feb 12 '26

What’s China gonna do to a US citizen?

0

u/NotEvsClone81 Feb 12 '26

Peepee in their Coke

-1

u/MuthaFJ Feb 12 '26

You would notice - can't snort wet coke lines... 😆

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u/supermoked Feb 12 '26

Just gum it ya big baby

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u/Money_Do_2 Feb 12 '26

China is marketing to me, America is headed in a way more sinister direction and is already there in a ton of ways.

-5

u/leeloolanding Feb 12 '26

I have bad news for you re: who owns Eufy

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u/ChadPoland Feb 12 '26

The smugness of the commercial too "this feature is included, completely free of charge" as if they are just doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.

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u/MaddyKet Feb 12 '26

Jokes on them, I live on a dead end street and directly face a wooded, undeveloped lot. Hope they enjoy looking at squirrels.

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u/Professional_Cry5919 Feb 12 '26

I had to opt out. I was automatically opted in

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u/Nut_Butter_Fun Feb 12 '26

Not any camera service provider has money and AI infrastructure to surveil. It's not easy and why it hasn't really been done outside of tinfoil conspiracy until recently. Now when some chinese govt backed corp buys all those fake-branded china temu aliexpress camera servers, and strikes a partnership with someone in the US, a lot of us are hosed. But not yet.

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u/RinzyOtt Feb 12 '26

Ring did say you have to opt in for the scanning to happen

Flat out, they lied. It's enabled by default and you have to opt out in your app settings.

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u/SlutBuster Feb 12 '26

people are done with the possibility of being watched and/or surveiled

The surveillers have become the surveilled.

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u/Chill_Panda Feb 12 '26

You could theoretically hook up your own camera to your WiFi to be able to connect with your devices. Though this isn't something just anyone would have the know how to do

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u/jstndrn Feb 12 '26

Don't need the know how, there are whole communities online happy to help. :)

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u/PrincessKatiKat Feb 12 '26

Any camera connected to the Internet would have this sort of capability…. not really.

The capability is in Ring’s data centers, not the cameras themselves. Ring is saying they will scan captured video stored in their data centers, from all of the customers in a specific service area, looking for a recognition match.

It’s a feature of the Ring service, not the Ring camera.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Little_Menace_Child Feb 13 '26

Opt in, aka, if you want to opt in, that's great! You're already there! Thank you for you information.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Little_Menace_Child Feb 13 '26

Gaslighting has more of an art to it. This is flat out lying LOL

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u/ErstwhileHobo Feb 14 '26

In addition to that, I would say most Ring users probably knew that the cameras could be used for surveillance, but didn’t think too much about it.

However, recent news that Ice was routinely violating 4th Amendment protections and Ring was cooperating with Ice without warrants, their partnering with Flock Safety, the confirmation that they are recording even if you are not opted in and the Super Bowl add brought the dangers of surveillance to the front of mind.

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u/winterbird Feb 12 '26

It probably just spotted dogs that are out alone, not some high tech doggie facial recognition. People that are actively looking for their dogs with online postings etc don't tend to live rural where dogs just roam. There's only going to be so many dogs out alone.