Amazon Restricts Data Access to Ring Employees After Abuse of Customer Video Access

Amazon has restricted access to customer videos by Ring employees after four incidents in recent years. In doing so, Ring employees abused their access to customer videos.

All four employees have been fired, according to the letter to US senators that Motherboard got hold of. Ring investigated the behavior of the employees in those four incidents after complaints, the company says in the letter. These complaints probably came from customers, although the information does not specify that. Amazon will not provide any further information.

Following the incidents, Amazon has limited the number of employees who can access customer videos. The company is also responding to questions from US senators about access to data from Ukrainian employees. The Ukrainian R&D department is said to have access to videos from random customers, but the company says that’s not true. They can only access videos from cameras belonging to Ring employees and employees’ family and friends, with explicit permission.

The new letter is Ring’s response to past questions from senators. Earlier in the correspondence, the company said in those replies that it is considering the use of facial recognition, but Ring is not going into details now. Amazon acquired Ring two years ago.