Ring is a video camera and app on you phone that lets you see and record whoever comes to your door. It also records whatever it can see from your doorway at all times and that info is Ring's to use as they see fit. It can function as a doorbell if you desire.
Ring is a rabbit hole A video camera makes rabbit pictures look like they are moving. Indica is an indicator People have line of sight with Ring to various things that are none of their business Shipping companies leave bait at your door, like overcrowding a Walmart sale suddenly became icky. No one taking bait Ring, they RUN.
Ring goes way deeper than the video I posted. That was just the settlement with the government over alleged violations, but Amazon has not admitted guilt and has not committed to change its ways. They just paid a small fine and get to say they're not guilty, nothing to see here folks...
This issue first came to public awareness, in a small underwhelming way, some years back and this was just now settled with nothing really changing. The video info from a ring doorbell is transmitted and monitored 24/7/365 to Amazon's servers, where it goes through all sorts of facial and vocal recognition analysis and who knows what from there. There is wide but obscure reporting about Amazon, google, etc giving backdoor access to the big letter agencies. Big Brother need not interject itself into our lives when we hand that over voluntarily. Google already has direct ties to CIA which helped get the thing started. You can google that relationship.
My neighbor across the street is about to install those surveillance cameras that simply replace a lightbulb and use WiFi to connect to the cloud. She bought them from Amazon. On one hand it's pretty cool to be able to pull up a live video feed of your home (and now mine too, I guess) on your smartphone. It's just that Amazon can (and knows who else) can see the same thing.
Some of my friends have motion sensing cameras and get a parade of animals across their yard all night long.That's kinda cool.I might get one of those.
I'll be having some doctor's visits coming up this year and have decided I really don't have a choice but to get a smart phone for the sole purpose of navigating to those appointments without getting lost and being late.
I'll be having some doctor's visits coming up this year and have decided I really don't have a choice but to get a smart phone for the sole purpose of navigating to those appointments without getting lost and being late.
I forgot to post above, as for me, well, it's ding-a-ling...
I recently renegotiated a deal with Spectrum where I get a free phone line for one year and they threw in a smartphone for only $5 per month to buy it. So I've got a Samsung Galaxy smartphone sitting here for two weeks now, have not even opened the box, I'm not thrilled about having this snooping device in my pocket but it's easy enough to turn off those features. I've been in front of computers nonstop since 1982 and it gets real old, so my flip phone has worked fine for me until now.
(It seems flip phones are becoming the new "fad" among the younger gens coming up, just like vinyl records and cassette tapes are coming back. So I've got a pile of old flip phones I'll be putting on eBay soon...)
When you do get your smartphone, go to YouTube and search the make and model of your phone with the added words "best security settings" and plenty of videos about how to to turn off all that background bloatware and nonsense. And I plan to have mine turned off when I don't use it. That's what they make voicemail for.
My next door neighbour thought it was a great idea until a bear or coyote wandered through her yard at 2:00 AM and her phone started beeping. At least she got some interesting videos.
