How to Get the Most Out of Ring’s New Privacy Features
Recently, it seems that every few days , new controversy has arisen around Ring’s smart home products.
This makes us skeptical about Ring’s privacy policy, but we also understand why people continue to buy and use Ring’s products despite potential security concerns; When Ring products work as intended, they make home security relatively inexpensive and easy to use. Ring seems to be finally taking steps to fix its recent blunders and will soon make it easier to find privacy controls with a new privacy dashboard that will be added to Android and iOS apps later this month.
For the most part, the new dashboard will simply be an amalgamation of the various options and account settings that were already available. However, there will also be some new additions, including the ability to track all the locations where your Ring account is currently located. This, in theory, should make it easier to detect unwanted account access by outsiders. It would be even better if Ring would also automatically reset your account credentials in cases where login credentials were compromised, but this feature remains on our Ring security wishlist for now.
The Verge also says the new dashboard will make it easier for users to enable or disable two-factor authentication (2FA) to sign in to an account. Two-factor authentication is based on text messages for some time has been available for all users of Ring and now when creating a new account, users will be asked to unsubscribe. Ring plans to add other two-factor authentication options in the future – which is good news since text-based two-factor authentication isn’t really that secure . More privacy features will also be added to the dashboard in the future.
Ring users can look forward to a new dashboard in an update scheduled for the end of this month. You will probably get a notification from the app after adding the privacy bar, but you can always check for new features for the Ring app. Just click the three-line hamburger icon to open the side menu, then click New Features.
However, you don’t have to wait for a new update to improve the security of your Ring account . You should update your password , add additional users with unique passwords, and enable two-factor authentication for each of these accounts right now . Not only will this help protect your Ring account and devices, but it will also give you a head start when the privacy panel becomes available.