Ring’s “Finding Group” Feature Is a Bit Creepy, but It Can Be Turned Off.
If you watched Super Bowl LX on Sunday, you may have seen Ring’s marquee commercial : the company attempted to play on dog owners’ collective fear of losing their pets by demonstrating how its new “Find Group” feature could help reunite missing dogs with their owners. Ring likely believed viewers would appreciate the feature: existing users would be thrilled to learn about the “Find Group” feature, and new customers would be eager to purchase a Ring doorbell to help find lost dogs in the neighborhood.
Of course, that wasn’t the case at all. Instead of being heartwarming, the ad scared the crap out of many of us who saw it. It’s because of how the feature itself works: Search Party uses artificial intelligence to identify pets running into the camera’s field of view. But it’s not just your camera that does this: it combines data from all Ring cameras with Search Party enabled to find your lost dog. Essentially, it turns all these individual devices into a Ring network, or, to put it more bluntly, a surveillance state. Sure, it’s done for a noble cause, but at what cost?
Reactions online ranged from shock to anger. Some were surprised that Ring cameras were even capable of this, given that you likely assume your Ring doorbell is yours. Others were furious, lashing out at anyone who thought Network Search was a good idea or that it was the beginning of a very slippery slope. My favorite comment compared Network Search to Batman’s cell phone surveillance system in The Dark Knight , which famously compromised morality and ethics in the name of catching a criminal.
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According to Ring, the Search Party feature is a completely safe and useful way to find lost dogs in your area. The company’s FAQ explains that users can opt out of the feature at any time, and only Ring doorbells in the area of the home where the current Search Party event is active will be able to search for dogs. Furthermore, Ring states that the feature relies on saved video recordings, so Ring doorbells without a subscription and saved video history will not be able to participate. (Although I’m not sure the fact that the feature works with saved video recordings allays my concerns.)
I’m not a fan of missing dogs. But I am for privacy. At the risk of sounding alarmist, I’ll say that the “Search Team” does seem like a slippery slope. Today, neighbors are banding together to find Mrs. Smith’s missing goldendoodle; tomorrow, they’ll be looking for a “suspicious person.” Innocent until proven guilty, unless it’s caught on your neighbor’s Ring camera.
Can law enforcement agencies request information about the group being searched?
Here’s the big question about the Search Party program and its slippery slope: Can law enforcement agencies—including local police, the FBI, or ICE—request stored video footage from Ring cameras participating in Search Party to track people, not pets?
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that this question wasn’t answered in Ring’s Super Bowl commercial, nor is it included in the official Search Party FAQ. However, we do know that, as of October 2025, Ring has partnered with both Flock Safety and Axon . Axon manufactures and sells law enforcement equipment, such as stun guns and body cameras, while Flock Safety is a security company offering services such as license plate recognition and video surveillance. These partnerships allow law enforcement to submit requests for Ring video footage directly within the Ring app. Ring users located near the request location can choose to share the footage or ignore the request. Flock Safety states that users who choose to share the footage maintain their privacy.
Of course, law enforcement won’t always ask for volunteers. According to Ring’s law enforcement guidelines , the company will comply with “valid and binding search warrants.” This, of course, isn’t surprising. But the company makes an important distinction about what it will share: Ring will share “non-content” data in response to both subpoenas and warrants, including username, home address, email address, payment information, account creation date, purchase history, and service usage data. The company states that it will not share “content”—data you store in your account, such as videos and recordings of customer support calls—in response to subpoenas only.
Ring also states that it will notify you if it shares your data with law enforcement, unless prohibited by law or if Ring’s data clearly violates the law. This applies to both standard data transfer requests and “emergency” requests.
Based on the current wording, it appears that Ring will share video footage used in the Warrant Search feature with law enforcement, subject to a warrant. However, it’s unclear whether Warrant Search has any real impact on this data: for example, imagine a dog runs in front of your Ring doorbell, and the footage is saved to your history. Now a warrant arrives requesting your video footage. Whether Warrant Search is enabled or disabled, Ring can share these recordings with law enforcement—the feature itself doesn’t affect whether the footage is saved on your doorbell. The difference will be whether law enforcement has access to the identifying data in the video: can they see that Ring believes the dog is indeed Mrs. Smith’s goldendoodle, or do they simply see a video of a fluffy puppy running past your house? If so, it would be a slippery slope indeed: if law enforcement were able to obtain your video footage containing facial recognition data of a wanted suspect, we would be in a particularly dangerous situation.
I have reached out to Ring for comment on this aspect of the Search Party issue and hope to receive a response that will allow me to provide a more complete answer.
How to Disable the “Find Group” Feature on Your Ring Cameras
If you don’t want to use this feature at all, Ring says it’s quite easy to disable. To get started, open the Ring app, tap the menu icon (three horizontal lines), then select “Control Center.” From there, select “Lost Pet Finder,” and then select the “blue pet icon” next to each of your cameras to launch the Lost Pet Finder feature.
Honestly, if I had a Ring camera, I’d go even further and delete the saved videos. Law enforcement won’t be able to access anything I haven’t saved. If you want to delete these clips from your Ring account, go to the hamburger menu in the app, tap “History,” select the pencil icon, and then tap “Delete All” to clear your entire history.