A new report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation once again has Amazon’s Ring in the hot seat regarding the privacy and security of its fleet of home monitoring devices. According to the nonprofit industry watchdog, the Ring app on Android is “packed with third-party trackers sending out a plethora of customers’ personally identifiable information.”
In its study, EFF found four main analytics and marketing companies—Branch, Mixpanel, AppsFlyer, and Facebook—to be on the receiving end of Ring’s data, which includes such information as screen resolution, names and email addresses. EFF notes that all of the data they monitored was sent using encrypted HTTPS and “was delivered in a way that eludes analysis.”
The organization used a Ring Video Doorbell and a Nexus 5X running Android Oreo to conduct its testing. The app has since been updated from version 3.21.1 to 3.22.1, but it’s unclear whether the activity of the trackers was changed.
In a statement to TechHive, a Ring spokesperson admitted to the use of the …