Todd Faulk
Published on: April 26, 2024

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is sending $5.6 million in payments to customers of Ring, the security devices company owned by Amazon. The payments are going to about 117,000 owners of certain types of Ring cameras, particularly indoor cameras in use in 2019 and before. Ring settled a suit brought by the FTC in 2023 alleging Ring violated its customers’ privacy.

The FTC alleged in a April 23 press release that “Ring deceived its customers by failing to restrict employees’ and contractors’ access to its customers’ videos, using its customer videos to train algorithms without consent, and failing to implement security safeguards.”

The FTC added that Ring failed to implement basic security measures, such as two-factor authentication, for customers’ accounts, which led to hackers infiltrating some accounts and stealing personally identifiable information. The government watchdog did not describe the extent of the account hacks in its press statement.

In its original complaint, the FTC accused Ring of giving every employee and hundreds of third-party contractors access to customer videos whether or not they needed the access to speed up productivity and product development, as Ring claimed. One Ring employee was found to have viewed thousands of videos of female customers in bathrooms and bedrooms over a period of several months in 2017.

The FTC fined Amazon $30 million in 2023 for the Ring privacy breaches, as well as privacy lapses involving the popular Alexa home virtual assistant. The $5.6 million in payments to Ring users comes from the fine collected from Amazon.

The FTC, which serves in part as a consumer protection agency, is sending payments to the affected Ring customers using PayPal. Once notified, customers will have 30 days to collect the payment.

Customers who have questions about their payment should contact the refund administrator, Rust Consulting, at 1-833-637-4884, or visit the FTC website to view frequently asked questions about the refund process.