Ring doorbell 3rd party trackers

heffsarmy

FYI

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/ring-doorbell-app-packed-third-party-trackers

John_Mc

To be fair, you would struggle to install any app these days that don't use 3rd party plugins which report usage statistics and crash reports to the developer. It's the same with websites where nearly all use Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, New Relic etc.

This date is summarised into dashboards to allow the developer understand how their app is used and how it can be improved.

Bluefoam

John_Mc wrote: »

To be fair, you would struggle to install any app these days that don't use 3rd party plugins which report usage statistics and crash reports to the developer. It's the same with websites where nearly all use Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, New Relic etc.

This date is summarised into dashboards to allow the developer understand how their app is used and how it can be improved.

Thats a bit misguided... Ring/Amazon are actually selling your email address, user name & other personal information. They are selling your actual footage to the Police & possibly others. This sets an extremely dangerious precident & there are calls for Amazon to close Ring down due to the extreme nature of the situation.

BTW. Amazon have admitted guilt on this.

I don't think other companies are going quite so far as Amazon are in violating your privacy.

The information they are providing to others allows them to further profile you, targeting you with political propoganda, target you with news selected by them to influence your opinions etc... I wouldn't let a ring device near my home.

John_Mc

Bluefoam wrote: »

Thats a bit misguided... Ring/Amazon are actually selling your email address, user name & other personal information. They are selling your actual footage to the Police & possibly others. This sets an extremely dangerious precident & there are calls for Amazon to close Ring down due to the extreme nature of the situation.

BTW. Amazon have admitted guilt on this.

I don't think other companies are going quite so far as Amazon are in violating your privacy.

The information they are providing to others allows them to further profile you, targeting you with political propoganda, target you with news selected by them to influence your opinions etc... I wouldn't let a ring device near my home.

It's not misguided - it is a fact that this is common practice. I'm not saying Amazon/Ring aren't going above and beyond that though.

How/why would they sell your information and to whom? Facts/references please.

I suspect the real situation is that the data is sent to the 3rd party and is isolated in the Ring account and only available to ring.

Do you have a Gmail email address?

Bluefoam

John_Mc wrote: »

It's not misguided - it is a fact that this is common practice. I'm not saying Amazon/Ring aren't going above and beyond that though.

How/why would they sell your information and to whom? Facts/references please.

I suspect the real situation is that the data is sent to the 3rd party and is isolated in the Ring account and only available to ring.

Do you have a Gmail email address?

Its all in the article linked above, and widely reported elsewhere:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/ring-doorbell-app-packed-third-party-trackers

AppsFlyer, a big data company focused on the mobile platform, is given a wide array of information upon app launch as well as certain user actions, such as interacting with the “Neighbors” section of the app. This information includes your mobile carrier, when Ring was installed and first launched, a number of unique identifiers, the app you installed from, and whether AppsFlyer tracking came preinstalled on the device.

Ring gives MixPanel the most information by far. Users’ full names, email addresses, device information such as OS version and model, whether bluetooth is enabled, and app settings such as the number of locations a user has Ring devices installed in, are all collected and reported to MixPanel.

Facebook, via its Graph API, is alerted when the app is opened and upon device actions such as app deactivation after screen lock due to inactivity. Information delivered to Facebook (even if you don’t have a Facebook account) includes time zone, device model, language preferences, screen resolution, and a unique identifier (anon_id), which persists even when you reset the OS-level advertiser ID.

All traffic we observed on the app was being sent using encrypted HTTPS. What’s more, the encrypted information was delivered in a way that eludes analysis, making it more difficult (but not impossible) for security researchers to learn of and report these serious privacy breaches.

you say that you ' suspect the real situation is that the data is sent to the 3rd party and is isolated in the Ring account and only available to ring.'. But that just shows you didn't read the article and are making things up.

This goes a step beyond that, by simply delivering sensitive data to third parties not accountable to Ring or bound by the trust placed in the customer-vendor relationship.

John_Mc

I'm a software developer and have used several of the products on apps we build. They are isolated to an account on Mixpanel and only users on that account can access the summarised data to identify issues. No one else can access that data. It's the same on Google Analytics.

Where in that article does it say they are selling the data to those parties?

Bluefoam

John_Mc wrote: »

I'm a software developer and have used several of the products on apps we build. They are isolated to an account on Mixpanel and only users on that account can access the summarised data to identify issues. No one else can access that data. It's the same on Google Analytics.

Where in that article does it say they are selling the data to those parties?

The data associated with users out in the wild is important to companies, and they’ll pay a lot of money to get it.

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2020/01/29/ring-android-app-data-collection/

Bluefoam

...

The danger in sending even small bits of information is that analytics and tracking companies are able to combine these bits together to form a unique picture of the user’s device. This cohesive whole represents a fingerprint that follows the user as they interact with other apps and use their device, in essence providing trackers the ability to spy on what a user is doing in their digital lives and when they are doing it. All this takes place without meaningful user notification or consent and, in most cases, no way to mitigate the damage done. Even when this information is not misused and employed for precisely its stated purpose (in most cases marketing), this can lead to a whole host of social ills.

Bluefoam

From a fairly reliable source:
https://gizmodo.com/dont-buy-anyone-a-ring-camera-1840070640

Ring is a troubled company. Last week a panel of five United States senators sent a letter to Amazon chief Jeff Bezos that expressed concern with Ring’s struggles with information security and habit of sharing its users’ videos not only with law enforcement but also with its Ukraine-based research team.

Do you want to buy the cameras this company is selling? More importantly, do you want to gift one of these surveillance machines to a loved one?

Don’t do it. Buy a Nest Hello doorbell. The hardware isn’t perfect, but that company isn’t feeding footage to the cops—that we know of. Better yet, buy a Logitech Circle 2 camera. You can review a whole day’s worth of footage for free, and the company also probably isn’t giving your personal data to cops.

Just steer clear of Ring.

Rew

Ring are awful on the privacy front for lots of reasons but the EFF are relying on scaremongering in this particular case. Websites, apps etc all use analytics platforms. Four 3rd party trackers (all of them reputable ones) in an app like that is nothing and the info its heavily aggregated or anonymised. They aren't shipping it to them to be sold off to the highest bidder.

ozmo

Rew wrote: »

Ring are awful on the privacy front for lots of reasons but the EFF are relying on scaremongering in this particular case. Websites, apps etc all use analytics platforms. Four 3rd party trackers (all of them reputable ones) in an app like that is nothing and the info its heavily aggregated or anonymised. They aren't shipping it to them to be sold off to the highest bidder.

There was a report on BBC couple months ago - they just mentioned casually how Ring door bells were used to help track car movements and prosecute some illegal activity in an estate.

Also...
Suffolk has been provided 1,000 free Ring doorbells....
“This is massively powerful for us. We have had at least four prolific criminals captured as a consequence of Ring doorbells.”

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9886618/police-amazon-free-camera-doorbells/


Also...
"No wonder cops are so keen on Ring – they can slurp your doorbell footage"
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/20/ring_police_spying/

..[US] investigation had found:
Ring has no security requirements for the law enforcement offices that get access to users’ footage
Ring has no policies that prohibit law enforcement from keeping shared video footage forever
Ring refuses to commit to not selling users’ biometric data
..etc. lots more on that link..

Rew

ozmo wrote: »

There was a report on BBC couple months ago - they just mentioned casually how Ring door bells were used to help track car movements and prosecute some illegal activity in an estate.

Also...
Suffolk has been provided 1,000 free Ring doorbells....
“This is massively powerful for us. We have had at least four prolific criminals captured as a consequence of Ring doorbells.”

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9886618/police-amazon-free-camera-doorbells/


Also...
"No wonder cops are so keen on Ring – they can slurp your doorbell footage"
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/20/ring_police_spying/

..[US] investigation had found:
Ring has no security requirements for the law enforcement offices that get access to users’ footage
Ring has no policies that prohibit law enforcement from keeping shared video footage forever
Ring refuses to commit to not selling users’ biometric data
..etc. lots more on that link..

Yes I said as much above, they are awful at privacy. The use of 3rd party trackers however is not further proof of this fact, it's just normal tools ALL apps use to help understand the usage of the app.

I wouldn't buy one, I tell people who ask my opinion not to buy them./ . My phone is still full or 3rd party trackers though and so is yours.

wexfordman2

ozmo wrote: »

There was a report on BBC couple months ago - they just mentioned casually how Ring door bells were used to help track car movements and prosecute some illegal activity in an estate.

Also...
Suffolk has been provided 1,000 free Ring doorbells....
“This is massively powerful for us. We have had at least four prolific criminals captured as a consequence of Ring doorbells.”

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9886618/police-amazon-free-camera-doorbells/


Also...
"No wonder cops are so keen on Ring – they can slurp your doorbell footage"
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/20/ring_police_spying/

..[US] investigation had found:
Ring has no security requirements for the law enforcement offices that get access to users’ footage
Ring has no policies that prohibit law enforcement from keeping shared video footage forever
Ring refuses to commit to not selling users’ biometric data
..etc. lots more on that link..

I am sure you, or someone else brought up this police footage issue before.

So, if you accept a free video surveillance device from your local law enforcement, erm....why are you in any way surprised that they were looking to retain access to said camera ?


If i tou are getting something for free, you are the product.

ozmo

wexfordman2 wrote: »

If i tou are getting something for free, you are the product.

.. actually my main issue with it is its Not free - you have to pay a yearly subscription to be monitored....

Basic and Protect. Basic costs $3 or $3 per month or $30 $30 for the year per device;

The high horse brigade

They've just published a blog post

https://blog.ring.com/2020/01/30/the-new-control-center-empowers-ring-customers-to-manage-important-privacy-and-security-settings/

Bluefoam

The high horse brigade wrote: »

They've just published a blog post

https://blog.ring.com/2020/01/30/the-new-control-center-empowers-ring-customers-to-manage-important-privacy-and-security-settings/

Seems like they are just allowing you to access some settings toggles that were hidden until now.

wexfordman2

ozmo wrote: »

.. actually my main issue with it is its Not free - you have to pay a yearly subscription to be monitored....

Basic and Protect. Basic costs $3 or $3 per month or $30 $30 for the year per device;

The device under the offer was free I beleive.

Anyway, get a free nest camera from your local police force.....:-)

ozmo

wexfordman2 wrote: »

The device under the offer was free I beleive.

Anyway, get a free nest camera from your local police force.....:-)

I wonder if ring logs everything home..(for their partners to browse). and only if you pay the 30 euros a year do you get access to your own data?

That would be a new low.

Bluefoam

I just read the Arlo privacy statement... Very thorough and lists every party that gets your info and what they do with it...

https://www.arlo.com/en-us/about/privacy-pledge/