this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2026
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A Super Bowl ad for Ring security cameras boasting how the company can scan neighborhoods for missing dogs has prompted some customers to remove or even destroy their cameras.

Online, videos of people removing or destroying their Ring cameras have gone viral. One video posted by Seattle-based artist Maggie Butler shows her pulling off her porch-facing camera and flipping it the middle finger.

Butler explained that she originally bought the camera to protect against package thefts, but decided the pet-tracking system raised too many concerns about government access to data.

"They aren't just tracking lost dogs, they're tracking you and your neighbors," Butler said in the video that has more than 3.2 million views.

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[–] teft@piefed.social 221 points 13 hours ago (38 children)

I hope what really gets people to pay attention is how the FBI said they searched that news ladies' moms' ring camera footage even though she didn't have an active subscription.

[–] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 34 points 10 hours ago (9 children)

My wife and I recently moved to a home with ring cameras preinstalled, but no subscription of course. We can only access a live feed via the cloud service. I told my wife, I don’t think it matters whether we have a subscription or not… if they want to use the footage from our home cameras for any reason at all, it’s in their power to do so. They can save it, scan it, watch it, … they don’t even need to save the video, they can save results from a scan to get out the important details more efficiently.

My wife didn’t want to hear it. She said we aren’t paying them, so there’s nothing they can do. Then this news story dropped about Google Nest. I showed my wife. We no longer have the ring cameras.

[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

Theoretically they wouldn't have internet access if a previous occupant set them up unless one of your neighbors has an unsecured AP. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding you and you're saying you set them up on your wireless network after you moved in. Still a good move to get rid of them but I wouldn't be as concerned about them if the only AP they were set up to use was no longer present.

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Nope. Ring cameras are part of Amazon Sidewalk which is effectively an automatic, invisible, and not end-user-controllable wireless mesh network "meant to keep devices working during wifi outages" or in other words to ensure the data makes it back to the cloud at any cost.

Their are more and more device manufacturers starting to use techniques like this to ensure connection regardless of owner intent.

[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

I can't say that's surprising but I have only heard of smart TVs having been confirmed to do that

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