no thank you vey much

[Rik]

Many people I know, love and use Alexa.
I don't have one, because, I just cannot accept the fact that there's something in the house listening to everything that's being said within its vicinity.
Sure, there are benefits many of you could list for me.
But, no. Not for me.

[pauland]

Hmm.

It's a balance. These guys shouldn't be logging this stuff. Thank you BBC.

I have three Ring cameras. They could be listening to us, but anyone who was listening would be very bored.

I use them for home security. When I am home I turn them round so they can't record anything. When we leave the house I turn them back. It would be even better if they had a physical power switch. Unplug them, you say - I can't mine are battery-powered (I have tried cabled versions, but they are a pain).

Both my adult children have Ring doorbells.

So why have these?

We used to have a Home Alarm security system. It was fine - if someone came into the house we would know. It required yearly maintenance, the batteries in it would eventually fail. We had several false alarms waking the neighbourhood from the external ringer. If someone entered our property we wouldn't know what they looked like or be able to interact with them ( beyond the siren going off ). We (I) eventually disabled our alarm system because of the costs of running it and it becoming increasingly unreliable.

The Ring cameras and the yearly subscription, cost us less than yearly service fee for our old alarm. A guy used to come along, look busy and dust the sensors. He would then reset the maintenance nag for another year.

The Ring cameras could be put into the garden to watch wildlife, and I plan to use on externally to watch our front door.

So, the cameras are comparatively cheap, low yearly maintenance and I get to see what's going on inside the house whenever I am out of the house. If there was an intruder my phone would alert me.

I understand the privacy concerns and I agree.

Our neighbours opposite have been broken into twice during the daytime. Another friend of ours has also been broken into. We were alerted once at 3 AM by the police, who told us there were intruders in our garden! They were right.

Our neighbours houses have now sprouted Alarm ringers.

So the cameras may not be for everyone, I understand that, Amazon, Ring etc should have better privacy policies for sure. On balance, I'll stick with the cameras.

Whatever you do, don't assume the bad guys won't appear at some stage when you aren't in. Consider having some form of Alert.

I'll also say that our Alarm ringer boxes ( front and back ) remain in place. One was always non-functional, now they both are. The installer said the important thing is that they are a visible sign that there is an alarm system installed. The bad guys would prefer there was no alarm system, so will often move on.

We decided to install our original alarm before we had a burglary, while most people install them after they have a burglary.

The cameras are staying, so are the non-functional external ringer boxes.

Paul



[ Just as well we don't use phones with cameras and microphones. It seems various government agencies and criminals have managed to access those, so I guess if you don't like Ring or Alexa, the phones and tablets are heading for the bin too.. ;-)

Some TVs have cameras and Microphones too. Our Samsung has two controllers, one voice activated. I don't use the voice-activated one. ]

[handrawn]

great post Paul - thank you

as it happens we don't have a camera/mic in our TV either - and apart from the desktop which has a good old fashioned plugin mic for audio, all the computers have them dissabled or taped

we all make our choices, but it is the data harvesting that is the real issue, plus the potential for hacking; hopefully we all make sensible choices for our own circumstances, and keep informed and up to date

I'm now off to find my way around an unfamiliar route [on foot] using google maps.....

[pauland]

It's actually quite outrageous how the big corporations track us while keeping a friendly face.

Sadly some governments lead the way with this stuff and way, way more.

Ring has had a number of publicised security breaches where hackers have taken control of their Ring devices. These hackers have taken passwords used by people to access another website ( where the hacker has obtained their email address and password ) and used that information to login to their Ring account and activate their Cameras - not Rings fault, but the fault of users using the same email address and password combination across multiple websites.

Two-way authentication anyone? (I know it can be spoofed)

The situation is particularly bad with all the other IOT devices, particularly for lesser-known manufacturers who may be streaming data to servers in China.

Oh and the early days of Apple - phone phreaking.. ..naughty.

I'm now off to find my way around an unfamiliar route [on foot] using google maps.....

A Google employee is making a note of your route right now..

[1alexie]

I have read several articles about it and so as watch some vlogs on Youtube.