Growing Trend
This week alone, there were four high-profile cases of creeps hacking into Amazon Ring cameras that families had installed inside their homes and using them to harass or spy on them.
In one, a man used the camera’s speaker to harass a family with racist comments and by triggering their alarm, according to The Cut. In others, predators spied on and communicated with children through the cameras that had been installed in their bedrooms. The takeaway: putting a poorly-secured smart camera inside your home can readily put your family at risk.
Change Your Passwords
A spokesperson for Ring told The Cut that the hackers didn’t actually bypass the camera’s security systems. Instead, they said, the individual users had used easily-guessed passwords or failed to enable security protocols like two-factor authentication.
But it seems unfair to expect customers to also become cybersecurity experts before buying their cameras — wouldn’t it be trivial for Amazon and Ring to make two-factor authentication a default setting or even a requirement for camera access?
READ MORE: Terrifying Videos Show Men Hacking Into Home Security Cameras [The Cut]
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