Parmy Olson, Columnist

Amazon’s Ring Camera Has an Eavesdropping Problem

Its doorbell camera can pick up neighborhood conversations at the end of a driveway by default. That needs to change.

October 15, 2021 at 3:21 PM UTC

Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is author of “Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World.”

A Ring Video DoorbellPhotographer: Neil Godwin/T3 Magazine/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

Up until two years ago, a British scientist named Dr. Mary Fairhurst lived in a brick house at the end of a quaint road of connected homes in Oxfordshire, U.K. Her neighbor, audio-visual technician Jon Woodward, lived on the other side of a narrow road between their houses. Woodward had installed several Amazon.com Inc. Ring cameras around his property, including on his shed, at the end of his driveway and on his door as a doorbell.

In 2018, Woodward was doing refurbishments on his house and invited Fairhurst for a tour. He showed her a video clip on his smartwatch of a car driving out of their communal car park, a live feed from one of his cameras.