How to Enable the New End-to-End Ring Encryption
Ring has just added end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to a select number of its smarthome cameras, protecting videos recorded by your Ring devices with an added layer of security. That still doesn’t make us excited about Ring devices, for sure considering all the problems the platform has experienced , but this is a feature worth knowing if you are already using a doorbell ring or a camera.
Ring videos are encrypted while they are uploaded to Ring’s cloud servers, but this new feature protects them with an optional 128-bit AES encryption layer that can only be decrypted and viewed on a mobile device registered with the Ring E2EE program. (You can read more about Ring’s E2EE policy in the recently published white paper on this feature .)
E2EE can prevent unauthorized people from intercepting and viewing videos while they are being recorded or sent to your devices; not even the Ring could decipher them. However, Ring’s E2EE also disables a number of user-side features, including motion checking and the ability to watch live Ring feeds on an Amazon Echo Show or Fire TV device. Your recorded videos will be more secure, but you will lose the live viewing and cloud monitoring capabilities, which can be just as important as the extra layer of encryption that E2EE adds.
If you’re willing to compromise, getting Ring’s new E2EE is easy – provided you have the right hardware. E2EE is only available on a few devices at startup:
- Video Doorbell Pro
- Video doorbell Elite
- Spotlight camera
- Inner chamber
- Wired Spotlight Camera
- Spotlight camera mount
- Stick Up Cam
- Stick up cam elite
Additional support may be added in the future, but for now you will need one of these devices to use E2EE. You will also need the latest version of the Ring app on any Android or iOS device you want to register. If you meet these requirements, you can enable E2EE in the Ring app:
- Open the Ring app.
- Go to Control Center> Video Encryption> Advanced Settings.
- Select End-to-End Video Encryption.
- Tap the slider to enable the feature, then tap Get Started.
- Follow the instructions in the app to register your account, mobile devices and ring cameras in end-to-end encryption.
- You can turn off E2EE at any time by turning off the End-to-end video encryption slider.
You will be prompted to generate a password during installation – don’t lose it! It cannot be recovered and all your encrypted videos will be lost. You will have to start with a different mobile device to use E2EE again.