11 ms·

Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

216 points by rahuldottech 7y ago

mtgx 7y ago
I'm willing to bet this is a PR attempt showing something along of the lines of "look, we protect your data by firing the people that look at your videos!" Which is absolute nonsense if this is their data protection policy. They'll only ever catch maybe 5% of the people doing it. This is also likely meant to hide the fact that their Ring security is extremely porous and they may want to keep it like that because that may also be how law enforcement gets access to those videos right now. Changing this may mean disrupting the police's access to them for a while. https://www.wired.com/story/ces-2020-amazon-defends-ring-police-partnerships/ https://www.wired.com/story/ces-2020-amazon-defends-ring-pol... Combine this with all the security issues AWS buckets have had, along with employees also accessing Alexa recordings, and it's almost starting to look like Amazon doesn't care all that much about securing your data...
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  > They'll only ever catch maybe 5% of the people doing it I wouldn’t be so confident about that. I’ve worked with a few large organisations where customer service staff needed to have access to sensitive customer data, and they usually had pretty good systems for detecting improper access to data, and would monitor it quite actively. I have no idea what monitoring systems Amazon has in place, but they could easily be doing quite a good job of it.
_Codemonkeyism 7y ago
How is this even possible?
- crtlaltdel 7y ago
  not the same, but years ago i worked on a cctv/dvr system for a Giant Electronics company. we watched HOURS of video (most w/o audio) as part of the rma process. there was good reason for it, as a failure in a circuit is sometimes a function of heat and time. there was one case where the device's ambient temp would spike and the video encoders would produce garbage output every few minutes. replacing the encoders resolved the issued. we kept a locked cabinet where drives with potentially sensitive video was kept, for instance we had a device that had been at a bank during an attempted robbery and had been malfunctioning. we stored the drive until it was certain the recorded data was corrupted, and not the playback system on our device. eventually the authorities agreed to take custody so we could get it off our hands. i was on the tech end of things and not the business end, so i cannot say what sort of privacy expectations our customers had. most of these were installed in businesses...but we did have a few from private residences.
- Jamwinner 7y ago
  Well, people who are unaware, or uncaring of the fallout, decided to install peep holes in their homes, with the implicit belif that no creep would be so vile as to actully look in. Now we have a quarter billion of those holes installed. Neat huh?
  - jrace 7y ago
    But peep holes are one-way, and the manufacture does not have the ability to remotely view the peep-hole.
- deith 7y ago
  Question is more like "why wouldn't this be possible"
cabaalis 7y ago
> 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. Customer asks you to review something? Just say you can't. The world will be happier.
- jayd16 7y ago
  For scenario 1. the employee would still have access they just wouldn't be using it.
  - sidlls 7y ago
    Why would that be the case? It's trivial to separate identification from content.
    - sp332 7y ago
      I guess the employee could send the video anywhere, including to themselves.
- teraflop 7y ago
  There's always somebody with root access to the servers.
  - mrmonkeyman 7y ago
    End-to-end encryption.
  - bshacklett 7y ago
    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.
chance_state 7y ago
It's the 2020 version of NSA employees using their vast surveillance apparatus to spy on their ex's[1]. Except this time people willingly let a for-profit company have streaming video access to their home. What's next, people installing microphones in their home that stream audio to Google or Amazon? [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveil-lance-watchdog/nsa-staff-used-spy-tools-on-spouses-ex-lovers-watchdog-idUSBRE98Q14G20130927 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveil-lance-watchdo...
- cabaalis 7y ago
  If a local home security surveillance company rolling up in a van installed cameras that they then used to spy on their customers, it's very likely the owner would be prosecuted. What puts Ring/Google/Amazon/etc above that standard? Just being large?
chrisballinger 7y ago
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 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210538
- mi100hael 7y ago
  I don’t know if Ubiquiti’s feeds are streamed encrypted, but at least the recording infra is 100% local and can be accessed locally without any cloud middleman if desires.
  - wil421 7y ago
    Best I could find[1] but I think the forum question is about having a NVR in another site with a VPN connection in between the site and camera. [1] https://community.ui.com/questions/Are-Unifi-Video-streams-encrypted-in-transit/f4a26431-ffa9-4a7c-aeef-f0638d21d741 https://community.ui.com/questions/Are-Unifi-Video-streams-e...
- izacus 7y ago
  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 working here.
  - coralreef 7y ago
    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.
    - jethro_tell 7y ago
mi100hael 7y ago
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.
- rchaud 7y ago
  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.
- gbrown 7y ago
  You vastly underestimate the complacency of average consumers.
  - jiveturkey 7y ago
    Yep, and Ring has already proven its model. If privacy were an actual problem, Ring would not have made it this far.
    - bluejekyll 7y ago
      This might be an education gap. That is, people really like the cameras and the way they work/ease of use, but they may not be aware of how non-private the recordings are. If they were, their opinion might be very different.
      - criddell 7y ago
        For some portion of their customer base, I'm sure that's true. Ring's biggest product is their doorbell and I'd be willing to bet that a big chunk of their customer base isn't that concerned if somebody accesses their doorbell video. I'm not sure I'd care...
crmrc114 7y ago
I have a couple of these devices outside along with some more traditional hardware going to a local DVR. I wanted cloud video storage in the event someone stole my dvr. I accept that someone someone may have access to this footage. I trust Amazon/Ring more than I trust some random Chinese company.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > I trust Amazon/Ring more than I trust some random Chinese company. Really? Why?
  - crmrc114 7y ago
    Because I worked at Amazon and I know how seriously they take data security.
    - dmitrygr 7y ago
      And yet, literally, this article shows that you cannot.
      - Kocrachon 7y ago
        Huge difference... Chinese company wouldn't fire them, it would give all of that data to a whole bunch of people in the government.
awinter-py 7y ago
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.
- booleanbetrayal 7y ago
  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?
  - forkerenok 7y ago
    There was a post about WiFi deauth attack against Ring devices: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21889837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21889837 Disclaimer: This is not an invitation to do such a thing. Be mindful of laws in your jurisdiction and ethics of this.
  - hooande 7y ago
    You have none. a tv crew could set up outside your house and record indefinitely. or even go through your trash. People are allowed to record public spaces. It's just bad behavior and the consequences are social
    - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
      Sounds super illegal and not GDPR compliant. You're not allowed to tape my private property without my consent. At least in Europe.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - jahlove 7y ago
        OP lives in the US.
nullc 7y ago
The only thing surprising is that they were caught, this time. Keep your camera footage local or demand end to end encryption.
Darkphibre 7y ago
What's a good cloudless setup? I've got a couple zwave devices, and have been looking into OpenHab. Win10 compatibility would be a bonus, as well as the ability to run my own OpenCV video analysis and voice recognition stacks...
- rbritton 7y ago
  Ubiquiti’s offerings can all run 100% locally. I have my entire setup using PoE so each only needs a single cable.
  - alexgaribay 7y ago
    I've been considering Ubiquiti since I'm going to redoing all the networking in my new house. Does Ubiquiti offer inner sort of facial-recognition-based alerts?
  - takeda 7y ago
    I'm actually planning to do same thing, probably also use that to install PoE wifi access points. I think I also will need VLAN functionality. Which switch do you use? Also any opinion about their recent fiasco with telemetry?
  - hmmdar 7y ago
    What do you use for motion detection? I've found the Unifi NRV motion detection to be very poor. Especially raining at night.
  - drone 7y ago
    You can also access it remotely, too, which is nice. If you don't have a fixed IP/don't want to manage firewall rules, they have a central service that creates the handshake between your remote device and your NVR to facilitate the connection.
- phlowbieuq 7y ago
  I'm working on IP cameras sending their video to Surveillance Station on my Synology NAS. Totally local recording, and was super easy to setup with some random IP cam I had laying around. My plan is to run cable for PoE cameras soon. Will have 24/7 recording, but accessible only locally.
lowdose 7y ago
On a tangent, does Apple already have a solution to their Spanish problem? Siri is apparently activated at every mention of the word "si" and specifically even more during bed room conversations. https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2019/07/29/apples-siri-routinely-records-you-having-sex/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2019/07/29/apples-si...
dmitrygr 7y ago
How is this even possible? I know that at Google, there was no way to access customer data directly. So this couldn't happen. That seems like a saner design
- ciabattabread 7y ago
  Where you there in 2010? https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/google-engineer-spying-fired/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/google-engineer-spying-fir...
  - dmitrygr 7y ago
    nope, joined in 2012
- nabnob 7y ago
  Same is also true at Amazon (at least from what I can remember).
doc_gunthrop 7y ago
It seems odd to automatically trust some surveillance equipment company to not spy on your video footage when they have that access. Not to say that these companies are all untrustworthy, but rather that it would be imprudent to assume trustworthiness by default. There are other solutions out there, like using a Raspberry Pi Zero [1] with some OSS[2]. The caveat here is that it requires a greater time investment from the consumer. 1: https://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2017/04/raspberry-pi-zero-w-cctv-camera-with-motioneyeos/ https://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2017/04/raspberry-pi-zero-... 2: https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneyeos/wiki https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneyeos/wiki
ogre_codes 7y ago
My big problem with IoT devices is trust. When a third party has control of my data, I have to trust the company is going be a responsible steward for my data. This is particularly telling since few of them (none?) have binding terms of service which protect the rights of the buyer. So you have situations like this where abuse happens or companies like Canary which made a rather big and infuriating change to their policies on storing data. To make things more complicated, if it's a small company you have to worry about it getting acquired. I've had multiple occasions where products I've purchased have shifted from having decent terms to terms which make me want to toss the product in the trash. As a result, I'm extremely cautious about purchasing IoT products. I haven't given up smart devices entirely, but I avoid the ones that require an account to sign in or rely heavily on cloud services. Smart cameras are particularly tricky since they reveal so much about you, particularly combined with machine learning and face identification.
- mv4 7y ago
  We built a video security assistant that's completely autonomous. Hoping to start selling direct in a month or so.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  I avoid the ones that require an account to sign in or rely heavily on cloud services. This is the best IoT advice I can give anyone. I've had at least a dozen "smart" lightbulbs orphaned by two different companies. One went out of business, the other just decided not to support them anymore. The amazing thing is with the first group of bulbs, the IoT company actually pushed out a software update bricking the controller box before it went out of business. This was a box that could have functioned forever because there were several tinkerers who had reverse-engineered the protocol and seemed close to releasing open source integrations. Naturally, there was no notice. The only way I found out was when the bulbs wouldn't respond anymore and I went to the company's web site where there was a notice. You know what doesn't always work? Smart light bulbs. You know what always works? Dumb light bulbs.
  - w0m 7y ago
    that's also why sometimes it's worth a little more for the name brand/larger company. I paid a little more for Hue, but my first bulb still functions the same or better than the day I bought it.

216 points by rahuldottech 7y ago

mtgx 7y ago

I'm willing to bet this is a PR attempt showing something along of the lines of "look, we protect your data by firing the people that look at your videos!" Which is absolute nonsense if this is their data protection policy. They'll only ever catch maybe 5% of the people doing it. This is also likely meant to hide the fact that their Ring security is extremely porous and they may want to keep it like that because that may also be how law enforcement gets access to those videos right now. Changing this may mean disrupting the police's access to them for a while. https://www.wired.com/story/ces-2020-amazon-defends-ring-police-partnerships/ https://www.wired.com/story/ces-2020-amazon-defends-ring-pol... Combine this with all the security issues AWS buckets have had, along with employees also accessing Alexa recordings, and it's almost starting to look like Amazon doesn't care all that much about securing your data...

AmericanChopper 7y ago
> They'll only ever catch maybe 5% of the people doing it I wouldn’t be so confident about that. I’ve worked with a few large organisations where customer service staff needed to have access to sensitive customer data, and they usually had pretty good systems for detecting improper access to data, and would monitor it quite actively. I have no idea what monitoring systems Amazon has in place, but they could easily be doing quite a good job of it.

_Codemonkeyism 7y ago

How is this even possible?

crtlaltdel 7y ago
not the same, but years ago i worked on a cctv/dvr system for a Giant Electronics company. we watched HOURS of video (most w/o audio) as part of the rma process. there was good reason for it, as a failure in a circuit is sometimes a function of heat and time. there was one case where the device's ambient temp would spike and the video encoders would produce garbage output every few minutes. replacing the encoders resolved the issued. we kept a locked cabinet where drives with potentially sensitive video was kept, for instance we had a device that had been at a bank during an attempted robbery and had been malfunctioning. we stored the drive until it was certain the recorded data was corrupted, and not the playback system on our device. eventually the authorities agreed to take custody so we could get it off our hands. i was on the tech end of things and not the business end, so i cannot say what sort of privacy expectations our customers had. most of these were installed in businesses...but we did have a few from private residences.
Jamwinner 7y ago
Well, people who are unaware, or uncaring of the fallout, decided to install peep holes in their homes, with the implicit belif that no creep would be so vile as to actully look in. Now we have a quarter billion of those holes installed. Neat huh?
- jrace 7y ago
  But peep holes are one-way, and the manufacture does not have the ability to remotely view the peep-hole.
deith 7y ago
Question is more like "why wouldn't this be possible"

cabaalis 7y ago

> 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. Customer asks you to review something? Just say you can't. The world will be happier.

jayd16 7y ago
For scenario 1. the employee would still have access they just wouldn't be using it.
- sidlls 7y ago
  Why would that be the case? It's trivial to separate identification from content.
  - sp332 7y ago
    I guess the employee could send the video anywhere, including to themselves.
teraflop 7y ago
There's always somebody with root access to the servers.
- mrmonkeyman 7y ago
  End-to-end encryption.
- bshacklett 7y ago
  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.

chance_state 7y ago

It's the 2020 version of NSA employees using their vast surveillance apparatus to spy on their ex's[1]. Except this time people willingly let a for-profit company have streaming video access to their home. What's next, people installing microphones in their home that stream audio to Google or Amazon? [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveil-lance-watchdog/nsa-staff-used-spy-tools-on-spouses-ex-lovers-watchdog-idUSBRE98Q14G20130927 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveil-lance-watchdo...

cabaalis 7y ago
If a local home security surveillance company rolling up in a van installed cameras that they then used to spy on their customers, it's very likely the owner would be prosecuted. What puts Ring/Google/Amazon/etc above that standard? Just being large?

chrisballinger 7y ago

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 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210538

mi100hael 7y ago
I don’t know if Ubiquiti’s feeds are streamed encrypted, but at least the recording infra is 100% local and can be accessed locally without any cloud middleman if desires.
- wil421 7y ago
  Best I could find[1] but I think the forum question is about having a NVR in another site with a VPN connection in between the site and camera. [1] https://community.ui.com/questions/Are-Unifi-Video-streams-encrypted-in-transit/f4a26431-ffa9-4a7c-aeef-f0638d21d741 https://community.ui.com/questions/Are-Unifi-Video-streams-e...
izacus 7y ago
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 working here.
- coralreef 7y ago
  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.
  - jethro_tell 7y ago

mi100hael 7y ago

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.

rchaud 7y ago
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.
gbrown 7y ago
You vastly underestimate the complacency of average consumers.
- jiveturkey 7y ago
  Yep, and Ring has already proven its model. If privacy were an actual problem, Ring would not have made it this far.
  - bluejekyll 7y ago
    This might be an education gap. That is, people really like the cameras and the way they work/ease of use, but they may not be aware of how non-private the recordings are. If they were, their opinion might be very different.
    - criddell 7y ago
      For some portion of their customer base, I'm sure that's true. Ring's biggest product is their doorbell and I'd be willing to bet that a big chunk of their customer base isn't that concerned if somebody accesses their doorbell video. I'm not sure I'd care...

crmrc114 7y ago

I have a couple of these devices outside along with some more traditional hardware going to a local DVR. I wanted cloud video storage in the event someone stole my dvr. I accept that someone someone may have access to this footage. I trust Amazon/Ring more than I trust some random Chinese company.

JohnFen 7y ago
> I trust Amazon/Ring more than I trust some random Chinese company. Really? Why?
- crmrc114 7y ago
  Because I worked at Amazon and I know how seriously they take data security.
  - dmitrygr 7y ago
    And yet, literally, this article shows that you cannot.
    - Kocrachon 7y ago
      Huge difference... Chinese company wouldn't fire them, it would give all of that data to a whole bunch of people in the government.

awinter-py 7y ago

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.

booleanbetrayal 7y ago
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?
- forkerenok 7y ago
  There was a post about WiFi deauth attack against Ring devices: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21889837 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21889837 Disclaimer: This is not an invitation to do such a thing. Be mindful of laws in your jurisdiction and ethics of this.
- hooande 7y ago
  You have none. a tv crew could set up outside your house and record indefinitely. or even go through your trash. People are allowed to record public spaces. It's just bad behavior and the consequences are social
  - ChuckNorris89 7y ago
    Sounds super illegal and not GDPR compliant. You're not allowed to tape my private property without my consent. At least in Europe.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - jahlove 7y ago
      OP lives in the US.

nullc 7y ago

The only thing surprising is that they were caught, this time. Keep your camera footage local or demand end to end encryption.

Darkphibre 7y ago

What's a good cloudless setup? I've got a couple zwave devices, and have been looking into OpenHab. Win10 compatibility would be a bonus, as well as the ability to run my own OpenCV video analysis and voice recognition stacks...

rbritton 7y ago
Ubiquiti’s offerings can all run 100% locally. I have my entire setup using PoE so each only needs a single cable.
- alexgaribay 7y ago
  I've been considering Ubiquiti since I'm going to redoing all the networking in my new house. Does Ubiquiti offer inner sort of facial-recognition-based alerts?
- takeda 7y ago
  I'm actually planning to do same thing, probably also use that to install PoE wifi access points. I think I also will need VLAN functionality. Which switch do you use? Also any opinion about their recent fiasco with telemetry?
- hmmdar 7y ago
  What do you use for motion detection? I've found the Unifi NRV motion detection to be very poor. Especially raining at night.
- drone 7y ago
  You can also access it remotely, too, which is nice. If you don't have a fixed IP/don't want to manage firewall rules, they have a central service that creates the handshake between your remote device and your NVR to facilitate the connection.
phlowbieuq 7y ago
I'm working on IP cameras sending their video to Surveillance Station on my Synology NAS. Totally local recording, and was super easy to setup with some random IP cam I had laying around. My plan is to run cable for PoE cameras soon. Will have 24/7 recording, but accessible only locally.

lowdose 7y ago

On a tangent, does Apple already have a solution to their Spanish problem? Siri is apparently activated at every mention of the word "si" and specifically even more during bed room conversations. https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2019/07/29/apples-siri-routinely-records-you-having-sex/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2019/07/29/apples-si...

dmitrygr 7y ago

How is this even possible? I know that at Google, there was no way to access customer data directly. So this couldn't happen. That seems like a saner design

ciabattabread 7y ago
Where you there in 2010? https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/google-engineer-spying-fired/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/14/google-engineer-spying-fir...
- dmitrygr 7y ago
  nope, joined in 2012
nabnob 7y ago
Same is also true at Amazon (at least from what I can remember).

doc_gunthrop 7y ago

It seems odd to automatically trust some surveillance equipment company to not spy on your video footage when they have that access. Not to say that these companies are all untrustworthy, but rather that it would be imprudent to assume trustworthiness by default. There are other solutions out there, like using a Raspberry Pi Zero [1] with some OSS[2]. The caveat here is that it requires a greater time investment from the consumer. 1: https://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2017/04/raspberry-pi-zero-w-cctv-camera-with-motioneyeos/ https://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2017/04/raspberry-pi-zero-... 2: https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneyeos/wiki https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneyeos/wiki

ogre_codes 7y ago

My big problem with IoT devices is trust. When a third party has control of my data, I have to trust the company is going be a responsible steward for my data. This is particularly telling since few of them (none?) have binding terms of service which protect the rights of the buyer. So you have situations like this where abuse happens or companies like Canary which made a rather big and infuriating change to their policies on storing data. To make things more complicated, if it's a small company you have to worry about it getting acquired. I've had multiple occasions where products I've purchased have shifted from having decent terms to terms which make me want to toss the product in the trash. As a result, I'm extremely cautious about purchasing IoT products. I haven't given up smart devices entirely, but I avoid the ones that require an account to sign in or rely heavily on cloud services. Smart cameras are particularly tricky since they reveal so much about you, particularly combined with machine learning and face identification.

mv4 7y ago
We built a video security assistant that's completely autonomous. Hoping to start selling direct in a month or so.
reaperducer 7y ago
I avoid the ones that require an account to sign in or rely heavily on cloud services. This is the best IoT advice I can give anyone. I've had at least a dozen "smart" lightbulbs orphaned by two different companies. One went out of business, the other just decided not to support them anymore. The amazing thing is with the first group of bulbs, the IoT company actually pushed out a software update bricking the controller box before it went out of business. This was a box that could have functioned forever because there were several tinkerers who had reverse-engineered the protocol and seemed close to releasing open source integrations. Naturally, there was no notice. The only way I found out was when the bulbs wouldn't respond anymore and I went to the company's web site where there was a notice. You know what doesn't always work? Smart light bulbs. You know what always works? Dumb light bulbs.
- w0m 7y ago
  that's also why sometimes it's worth a little more for the name brand/larger company. I paid a little more for Hue, but my first bulb still functions the same or better than the day I bought it.