Ring Doorbell App Secretly Shares User Data With Multiple Trackers
An EFF investigation reveals that the Ring Android app sends highly personal user data to four major marketing and analytics companies without meaningful consent.
An investigation by the Electronic Frontier Foundation reveals that the Ring doorbell app for Android actively surveils its own customers by sharing their personal data with third-party trackers. The app sends personally identifiable information to four main analytics and marketing companies, including Branch, Mixpanel, AppsFlyer, and Facebook. This data sharing occurs without meaningful user notification or consent, leaving paying customers with virtually no way to stop the practice.
The information passed to these trackers includes names, private IP addresses, mobile network carriers, and sensor data from the users' devices. Even when individual data points seem small, tracking companies combine them to create a unique device fingerprint that follows users across their digital lives. This allows the trackers to spy on what users are doing and exactly when they are doing it, building a comprehensive profile of their daily routines.
This hidden data mining directly contradicts the image of security and trust that Ring cultivates for its customers. While the company profits from a vast surveillance network that also facilitates unprecedented police access to private lives, it simultaneously hands over sensitive user information to data miners. Even if this data is used solely for marketing purposes as stated, the practice fundamentally undermines the privacy expectations of consumers who purchase a home security product.