FTC sends $5.6 million in refunds to Ring customers as part of video privacy settlement

The Federal Trade Commission is sending much than $5.6 cardinal successful refunds to consumers arsenic portion of a colony with Amazon-owned Ring, which was charged with failing to support backstage video footage from extracurricular access

NEW YORK -- The Federal Trade Commission is sending much than $5.6 cardinal successful refunds to consumers arsenic portion of a colony with Amazon-owned Ring, which was charged with failing to support backstage video footage from extracurricular access.

In a 2023 complaint, the FTC accused the doorbell camera and location information supplier of allowing its employees and contractors to entree customers' backstage videos. Ring allegedly utilized specified footage to bid algorithms without consent, among different purposes.

Ring was besides charged with failing to instrumentality cardinal information protections, which enabled hackers to instrumentality power of customers' accounts, cameras and videos. This led to “egregious violations of users’ privacy,” the FTC noted.

The resulting colony required Ring to delete contented that was recovered to beryllium unlawfully obtained, found stronger information protections and wage a hefty fine. The FTC says that it's present utilizing overmuch of that wealth to refund eligible Ring customers.

According to a Tuesday notice, the FTC is sending 117,044 PayPal payments to impacted consumers who had definite types of Ring devices — including indoor cameras — during the timeframes that the regulators allege unauthorized entree took place.

Eligible customers volition request to redeem these payments wrong 30 days, according to the FTC — which added that consumers tin interaction this case's refund administrator, Rust Consulting, oregon sojourn the FTC's FAQ leafage connected refunds for much accusation astir the process.

In a connection sent to The Associated Press, Ring said that atrocious actors took emails and passwords that were “stolen from different companies to unlawfully log into Ring accounts of definite customers" who utilized the aforesaid credentials connected aggregate sites backmost successful 2019 — adding that the institution promptly addressed this by notifying those it discovered to beryllium "exposed successful a third-party, non-Ring incident” and taking enactment to support impacted accounts.

Ring did not instantly code the FTC's allegations of employees and contractors unlawfully accessing footage.

Earlier this year, the California-based institution separately announced that it would halt allowing constabulary departments to petition doorbell camera footage from users, marking an extremity to a diagnostic that had drawn disapproval from privateness advocates.