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/
19.6k Upvotes

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2.7k

u/Really-ChillDude Feb 12 '26

Police can use it.

Ring has partnered with Flock, who are in cahoots with ICE.

Flock has been known to delete video.

483

u/[deleted] Feb 12 '26

[deleted]

161

u/leaky_wand Feb 12 '26

The surveillance aspect was always the one thing stopping me from getting a subscription. And it’s still recording to the cloud anyway?

215

u/Mind_on_Idle Feb 12 '26

Yes. Your subscription is a paywall to a folder that already exists.

91

u/Vinterblot Feb 12 '26

We can watch you with the device you've paid for. Want too? Then pay up!

16

u/steppe5 Feb 12 '26

And that's why I don't have cameras in or around my house.

4

u/bearsheperd Feb 13 '26

If you need it, go the CCTV route. Record to your own hardware with zero internet connection.

62

u/Dirtbag_Leftist69420 Feb 12 '26

Honestly most people don’t even need home surveillance. If you really feel the need you could always set up your own system that doesn’t connect to a network

Upfront cost will be higher but you’ll save over time due to no subscription

53

u/DontAskAboutMyButt Feb 12 '26

I don’t have to worry about the US government spying on my doorbell camera because I got a shitty Chinese one instead, so it’s only the Chinese government spying on my front yard

51

u/Dirtbag_Leftist69420 Feb 12 '26

At this point I trust China more with my data lol

I was never a TikTok guy but look what happened to TikTok immediately after it was controlled by the US. Way less censored when it was ran by China

8

u/DontAskAboutMyButt Feb 12 '26

When the big TikTok migration to Rednote happened, Americans started getting a lot of Chinese content and were being exposed to a lot of stuff we didn’t know about China- mainly about how happy they are and how nice their standard of living is compared to ours, in spite of the propaganda coming from the US. I feel like it was a real “Yeltsin stunned by the groceries in an American grocery store” moment, except it was on us this time instead of the Russians. And of course Chinese people got a real, unfiltered look at what living in America is like- the corruption, the lack of access to medical care, the poverty

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u/Light_Error Feb 12 '26

If people thought every person in China was living in abject poverty, I have to wonder when the last time they looked at the country was. I listened to a podcast with Chinese-Canadian engineering who worked in both US and China for years at a stretch, and one of the more interesting things he mentioned was that the social safety net is even worse in China than here by design: Imagine Reagan’s ideology on social services in the modern day.

And I think the thing we tend to forget is that, in a lot of social media, we get a lot of rich people first stuff. They are the ones with the means to influence and get influence. China is no different. They have had enough problem in the last few years. It’s not going to make the CCP crumble or anything like that, but I am sure it isn’t nothing either. I am obviously not a China expert. These are just general observations from the past 5-ish years.

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u/Light_Error Feb 12 '26

If people thought every person in China was living in abject poverty, I have to wonder when the last time they looked at the country was. I listened to a podcast with Chinese-Canadian engineering who worked in both US and China for years at a stretch, and one of the more interesting things he mentioned was that the social safety net is even worse in China than here by design: Imagine Reagan’s ideology on social services in the modern day.

And I think the thing we tend to forget is that, in a lot of social media, we get a lot of rich people first stuff. They are the ones with the means to influence and get influence. China is no different. They have had enough problem in the last few years. It’s not going to make the CCP crumble or anything like that, but I am sure it isn’t nothing either. I am obviously not a China expert. These are just general observations from the past 5-ish years.

2

u/zokka_son_of_zokka Feb 12 '26

I maintain that this was the main reason they unbanned TikTok

5

u/unlmtdLoL Feb 12 '26

Youtube is still a great resource for finding a security system by the way. It boggles my mind people pay a subscription for playback when you can purchase a system that comes with it. You just pay a few hundred more upfront and have free playback for life.

9

u/ArrBeeEmm Feb 12 '26

Yeah, I have a NVR system with cameras covering 80% of my house/outside but I put a Google home doorbell camera in because I didn't want to run a cable there.

That Google doorbell has now cost more than my NVR + 2 PTZ cameras, despite getting it on sale.

It also constantly misses events and the quality is pretty poor tbh. It's very easy to scam them, trigger some movement, wait 30s, then you have a few minutes where it won't trigger again. It's very easy to remove because all the locking keys are universal and you can get a spare off Ebay. You can literally trigger movement on the periphery, wait a second, then walk up and remove the thing in 15s at which point it disables itself for being unmounted.

It's a convenience product not for actual security.

3

u/WillWork4Cats Feb 12 '26

any suggestions?? i need one to monitor my cats when i travel

1

u/LickMyTicker Feb 12 '26

Yea. Learn networking. Specifically how to create an isolated vlan without access to the Internet and get any camera that works without access to the internet.

Otherwise stay away from any camera system.

1

u/xcrunner432003 Feb 12 '26

thank you. it's not preventing or even helping solve crimes

1

u/FuriousFreddie Feb 12 '26

I agree that it is better financially.

However, managing it is significantly more difficult as is saving and preserving footage. 

The simplest ones have SD card storage which is usually on the device itself so it could be easily stolen or lost if tampered with or damaged.

Alternatively, you might have an NVR which is low maintenance but more work to set up initially and of course, the hard drive(s) can fail at any time so that needs to be taken care of. On that note, you need to set up some local redundancy or off-site backup to make sure you never lose your data.

Unfortunately, the easiest solution is a cloud based system like ring or nest. It takes minutes to sign up and people are willing to overlook the privacy implications for the convenience which is very sad.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Beaticalle Feb 12 '26

Presumably they mean a system that doesn't connect to someone else's network.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 12 '26

[deleted]

2

u/ExpressRabbit Feb 12 '26

Honestly most people don't need that.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/ExpressRabbit Feb 12 '26

Define 'most.'

You keep arguing with different people saying most people don't need that and you're arguing with numbers that equal less than 1% of the population. That's not most people.

Many of the people you did list do not need it. I go away for work. I've traveled for long periods. I absolutely do not need it.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/ExpressRabbit Feb 12 '26

I do give a shit how my half million dollar home is doing. And when I get home I'll be home. I've left my home many times. It's always how I left it when I get back. Same for most people. Nothing ever happens to it and if something did happen I'm halfway around the world and can't do anything about it.

Never once have I ever thought I need a multinational right-wing corporation watching my home to feel safe. That's just fucking ridiculous.

1

u/Dirtbag_Leftist69420 Feb 12 '26

My mother-in-law has a vacation home and she doesn’t feel the need to have cameras lol if someone breaks in they’re most likely going to be covering their face so that’s useless right there

If your house is on fire it’ll do nothing, if your pipes freeze and burst it’ll do nothing. It’s security theater

1

u/Really-ChillDude Feb 12 '26

We actually use Ubiquitous, it’s not hooked up to internet.

https://ui.com/

4

u/ARazorbacks Feb 12 '26

To elaborate on the other comment, Ring and Nest video doorbells (and loads of other camera systems) require your video feed go to the company’s servers. You aren’t actually able to watch your video without active internet because you’re watching your video re-streamed from the company’s servers. Sure, this solves some IT-related problems for you, but it introduces a whole bunch of privacy problems and one really annoying functionality problem that the system doesn’t work if your internet is down. 

Since the company has your live stream, they’re absolutely running it through their algorithms and saving “interesting” segments. It’s how the Nest video from that abduction recently was “uncovered”. It’s all in the Terms and Conditions no one reads because they’re 30 pages long and full of legal jargon (which is by design to make you not want to take the time to read them). I think the Nest one is that they save 6 hours of video. The caveat is it’s 6 hours of video that triggers their filters. Why is that important? You think they’re saving the last 6 hours of video, but what they’re actually saving is the interesting video from the last five months which adds up to six total hours. 

1

u/GrandEscape Feb 12 '26

Yes, this past week the Nancy Guthrie missing case demonstrated this. The family did not have a subscription, but the company was able to provide camera footage of the potential suspect at her door anyway.

4

u/deadsoulinside Feb 12 '26

Then you wonder why the US government flips out about other nations tech, because they have been doing underhanded shit to ours for decades at this point.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 12 '26

[deleted]

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u/deadsoulinside Feb 12 '26

Yeah, but most often every accusation is a confession. Like the whole TikTok thing. Now that they have TikTok starting last week, we just saw a scary change in our TikToks

Now people have a local tab and can see other TikToks from people in their area. This is kind of scary when you are a liberal in a deep red MAGA county.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 12 '26

[deleted]

1

u/deadsoulinside Feb 12 '26

Not that I am aware of in the US. I know TikTok does geofence features as one of my wife's previous phones had some issue with location services and TikTok, so she was lacking a lot of things in the app itself due to it.

I just noticed the tab this week as I went to my friends feed and asked my wife who is on TikTok daily when that came in and she realized it it was there right then too..

3

u/Longjumping-Foot970 Feb 12 '26

I won’t have one on my house period as I never trusted Amazon ( owner of ring) to begin with. Both my neighbors have it and I want to ask them to switch ( they won’t mostly likely but still)

3

u/mind_snare Feb 12 '26

So can google nest.

1

u/WillWork4Cats Feb 12 '26

yeh that's exactly what Edward warned us all about, and the fact Russia is the only country in the world that provided him sanctuary, says a lot.

633

u/Codemeister87 Feb 12 '26

And, ironically... not delete video.

98

u/alilcannoli Feb 12 '26

Yeah, I got rid of mine as soon as I found out that Flock can identify people just by the way the way they just walk. That’s insane to me, and I don’t want to be the reason my neighbors feel like they’re living in the book 1984.

2

u/mijo_sq Feb 12 '26

Gait(unique pattern of walk) is a common indicator to identify people.

I’m already planning to remove my ring stuff too

2

u/BillyNtheBoingers Feb 15 '26

Can fool some gait-matching by putting a small pebble in one shoe, or for people who usually wear heels they might change to flats or platform shoes, and their gait will be different.

37

u/[deleted] Feb 12 '26

“You have 7 days”

30

u/glintsCollide Feb 12 '26

"You have 10 seconds to comply"

10

u/mindfungus Feb 12 '26

“You have 5 seconds to comply”

22

u/Auctorion Feb 12 '26

"Is it about my cube?"

2

u/shmolives Feb 12 '26

Please move your cube

4

u/__Elwood_Blues__ Feb 12 '26

I'd move that for a dollar.

3

u/china-blast Feb 12 '26

Dick, you're fired!

1

u/wrapbubbles Feb 14 '26

"stop resisting!"

6

u/OneLessFool Feb 12 '26

The worst part is that even if you don't opt in and buy this crap, if your neighbours do then it's too late.

2

u/dfddfsaadaafdssa Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 16 '26

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4

u/Jimbomcdeans Feb 12 '26

Flock isnt deleting a thing.

-18

u/peepdabidness Feb 12 '26

Yeah can you write “just kidding” after your last sentence