Ring (Amazon)

Ring's new 'Familiar Faces' feature (launched Dec 2025) uses AI facial recognition to build a database of up to 50 people per household — and a proposed class action filed in Seattle federal court in early June 2026 by Virginia resident Charles Sigwalt alleges it captures and stores the FACE OF ANYONE who walks up to that door, including a friend visiting, a delivery driver, or a stranger simply passing by, none of whom ever consented. This comes after Ring's OWN 2023 FTC settlement ($5.8M) for a documented case of an employee spying on women through their in-home cameras in bathrooms and bedrooms. Ring had actually ENDED its direct police-footage-request program (Request for Assistance) in January 2024 after public backlash — but reversed course in 2025, announcing a police 'Community Requests' partnership with Axon (Taser's parent company) in April 2025 and a similar tie-up in October 2025 with Flock Safety, a company whose surveillance network has separately been reported as linked to federal immigration enforcement accessing location data; Ring cancelled the planned Flock integration in February 2026. Ring still provides footage to police in emergencies WITHOUT a warrant or the homeowner's consent.

• Severity
• Evidence tierUnassigned
• Claims confirmed
• Last verified2026-08-04

Primary source. www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-sends-refunds-ring-customers-stemming-2023-settlement-over-charges-company-failed-block — Verified - primary source confirmed.

Arbitration

Standard binding arbitration + class action waiver expected (not independently confirmed word-for-word this pass); the FTC order itself runs for 20 YEARS once approved.

Data sharing

DEEPLY CONCERNING SUBSTANTIATED FTC FINDING (2023 settlement, still the governing precedent): the FTC's complaint found Ring gave EMPLOYEES UNRESTRICTED ACCESS to customers' home camera footage before September 2017 — including a documented instance where a Ring employee viewed THOUSANDS of video recordings from at least 81 FEMALE users' cameras (assigned to bathrooms and bedrooms) over a three-month period; a coworker's initial misconduct report was not taken seriously until a supervisor noticed the employee was 'only viewing videos of pretty girls.' Separately, Ring's inadequate security (no multi-factor authentication until 2019) let hackers access customer camera feeds and sexually proposition people, call children racial slurs, and threaten families for ransom through hacked two-way video/audio — roughly 55,000 US customer accounts were compromised.

Contacts

Privacy contact. Not recorded.

Legal notice. Not verified this pass. If publicly traded: SEC Form 10-K cover page gives the official corporate address; the Secretary of State business-entity search in the state of incorporation gives the registered agent, which must accept service. If private: the state registered agent is usually the only reliable route.

Mailing address. Not recorded.