Amazon Ring Now Under Legal Fire After a Number of Recent Cybersecurity Incidents
Last updated June 29, 2021
- As a result of a number of privacy-related incidents, Ring is asked to pay $5 million in damages for the invasion of privacy and breach of contract.
- A user from Alabama decided to sue the company after a hacker managed to access his Ring camera and harass his family.
- The lawsuit is supported by seven individual incidents of device takeover that are allegedly the company’s fault.
As much as Amazon tried to play down the recent hacking incidents that involved its Ring cameras, users are not willing to let this one pass. John Baker Orange, a father from Alabama has decided to sue Ring after a hacker harassed him and his family during a basketball game in their yard. The lawsuit that was submitted is trying to substantiate Ring’s deficient security by including several other recent hacking incidents, leading to the conclusion that the product is entirely vulnerable.
Only a couple of weeks back, we covered a story about a hacker accessing the Ring camera of an eight-year-old girl, telling her that he’s Santa. This was apparently only the tip of the iceberg, as people were commenting about Ring takeover podcasts for a while, bitcoin ransoms were demanded from extorted victims, and night frights that scared people during their sleep time were also in the mix. Ring’s representatives tried to play down all of this by saying that they must be the result of credential stuffing attacks. The company didn’t accept that there was something wrong with the security of their Ring products and advised users to follow certain precautions.
However, users like Mr. Orange are maintaining an entirely different opinion on the matter, as they feel that they have followed the proper security precautions and yet they were still hacked. As the lawsuit claims, Ring failed to fulfill its core promise of providing privacy and security, calling the camera systems “fatally flawed”. The lawsuit is now asking for damage compensation of $5 million, a request that is to be decided by the U.S. District Court of California. For now, Amazon and Ring are not providing an official comment regarding the lawsuit.
Ring has managed to go from an innovative unicorn to a mass-surveillance menace in just four years following its inception. Although an increasing number of people are worried about their privacy and security, they still continue to support these products by buying and using them in their homes. Lawsuits like this one may play a key role in forcing Ring to implement better security and admit their mistakes. It all depends on what the Californian court will make of the lawsuit, and whether the seven hacking incidents that are used as supporting examples can be proved to be Ring’s faults without any doubt.
Do you think that Ring should be ordered to pay the damage compensation, or are these incidents due to the negligence of the users? Let us know of your estimation in the comments section down below, or on our socials, on Facebook and Twitter.
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