Stop Ring From Sharing Your Data With Marketing Companies
Ring’s home security devices are supposed to help protect your family and home, but it turns out that the company is using its products to sell your personal data to third-party advertisers and marketers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently released a report showing that the Ring app contains undisclosed third-party trackers to collect user data, which it then sells to other companies. This ring tracks and sells user data not that surprisingly – Ring is an Amazon-owned company, after all, but it’s intrusive nonetheless.
In response to user complaints and public criticism of the report, Ring has suspended third-party analytics tracking and is updating the Ring app with a new option to opt out of the data exchange program. The new setting is included in this week’s app update, which you should receive soon (if you haven’t already). After updating the app, you can opt out of tracking Ring data as follows:
- Open the Ring app.
- Go to Menu> Third Party Service Providers.
- Scroll down to the Personalized Ads section and turn off Personalized Ads.
Tracking unwanted data isn’t the only privacy issue Ring has been criticizing lately. The company recently updated its app with a new security dashboard and (finally) forces all users to enable text or email based 2-Step Verification to prevent unwanted logins from outsiders and hackers, not to mention a few cases of questionable storage methods that have made the video and other user data readily available . Be sure to check out our guide on how to enable these new settings and our other tips for keeping your Ring devices secure .