this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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...and do they sell data, including video, to law enforcement and insurance?
Sincerely, A person who recently was in a fender bender and was not surprised at all when Progressive shared "incident footage" from a Ring camera across the street at a location completely unrelated to the fender bender
(They ARE selling your data, folks. NEVER trust big tech to act in your best interest)
I stopped my Ring subscription but kept the doorbell camera.
It wasn't until a year later when I was moving and the house was almost completely empty (still had internet/wifi setup) and I looked at the wifi app and saw that the ring doorbell still had significant data usage.
They were clearly still capturing my doorbell video.
They also, if you don’t turn it off, default to allowing other Amazon devices to use YOUR Ring to access the Internet.
It's a rebranded Tuya device, and they don't sell your data to any law enforcement or insurance.
They do however comply with Chinese laws and all your data is readily available for the Chinese government.
That hardly seems like a relevant concern to any US or other international buyers though
All your data from this device being stored on servers in China that are accessible to the Chinese government isn't a relevant concern?
What are they gonna do? Send the Chinese police to break down my door and ship me to El Salvador? At least china is less likely to just give that info to the people who can actually commit violence against me.
Personally I don't care which state actor it is, I don't want any of them to have easy access to my data.
If they want it, they should work for it.
Umm… that could have just been the other driver asking the person for their footage from the camera they saw.
Not everything is a conspiracy dude, that’s commonly done after any incident lmfao.
I have cameras and plenty of people have asked me for random footage for thefts and collisions, none being a company or insurance, always the person affected…
Edit, sorry I guess once the police did, but still there’s nothing odd or weird about what happened to you.
Except it literally is a conspiracy (An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.) and actually happening. Debatably it's legal, rightful, and not subversive. I think most people would disagree though. It's not like people are just guessing this is happening. We know the data is being sold, to the police/government, and presumably also to other companies.
In this case, it might not involve the surveillance company selling or sharing anything. All an insurance adjuster has to do is knock on doors in the area and ask the home owners if they are willing to share any video footage they have.
And yes, people do this all the time. I work in this industry.
I really hate to stand on the side of the data hoarding conglomerates, but there's a significant chance they were not involved in the release of that video.
Just to be clear in most places it’s not legal to have a video camera pointed at the street (or your neighbors’ houses). Not that this has been enforced at all. But if somebody wanted to pursue you legally for that they could.
What places?
Usually it’s a misinterpretation of the law, they are not meant to interfere with security and law enforcement. There’s always exceptions, usually it’s how they trigger or store the data. If it’s automatically wiped, usually no laws have been broken for example.
Don't know about most places but regarding Germany, OP is correct. It's verboten to film property of neighbours, public places or places shared with neighbours with your statically installed surveillance camera. You have to get consent of filming neighbours and you have to put up signs informing persons like delivery drivers that they're getting filmed. That's what my short search resulted in.
Where I live for instance. Like I said it isn’t enforced.
What country? I’m sure there’s exceptions that you don’t know about, the laws normally don’t disallow their use, it’s in how the data is stored.
A security system that doesn’t record, but is watched by someone would be legal anywhere for example. Just the fact that there’s one, means sweet fuck all.
A lot of it depends on if your state is single party or not.
Also you need to chill.
That applies to audio… not video recordings mate.
Why are you telling me to chill? Because I used a bloody swear word…?
It applies to both.
Yes and because you need to chill.
No… your link even specifies that….
L
O
Fucking
L
It’s the internet, people can swear dude.
In my state it’s both.
Yes you can. You still need to chill.
I’ve never heard of that before… and Google shows zero results for “states with two party consent for video recording” all links are for audio… what state… please… how many times do I need to ask nicely so we can solve this?
Just because you’re wrong and got called out doesn’t mean the other person is being aggressive lmfao.
Right because a quick google search makes you a legal expert…
For real chill.
Is it so odd, that someone knows how to read and understand code and law books? It’s part of any tradesperson training.
I know it’s not a thing, from plenty of research into my own camera systems, and I am confident that I know the results I found are correct, because I know how to understand code and law books.
And no it doesn’t, but the lack of any results shows that you’re full of fucking shit.
Again, just because someone swears doesn’t mean they are being aggressive! It’s common repertoire for a lot of working people! Sorry princess!
I am a compliance expert. I too am confident in my assessment of the legal situation.
I am officially tagging you as a troll and moving on with my life. You seriously need to learn to chill.
Yet you claim there is two party consent for video, won’t provide anything to support that claim, and the one link you did specifically says it doesn’t…
People can be confidently wrong, like in this case..
Awwwwhhh I upset muffin by using logic and reason to refute them.
Your link completely refutes what you're saying lol
Maybe try reading it next time "compliance expert"
That only applies if you aren’t recording audio as well.
The article is just a general overview of specifically Ring cameras and not specific to any one state or other recording devices. In my state for instance it is also illegal to be able to see license plates from personally owned security cameras, though we have Flock cameras here so yeah…
Why do so many people on Lemmy just really need a “gotcha”?
Reasonable expectation of privacy applies to video recording, audio recording, and still photography. You can be in a public space having a private conversation if you can reasonably expect no one would be able to hear it, but you can't have a conversation in front of a plainly visible surveillance camera and then claim you were being eavesdropped on. You don't even truly need to "consent" to being recorded, you just have to have knowledge that it is happening.
That's also not what you said, your original comment was "it’s not legal to have a video camera pointed at the street".
I'd love to see a law on the books anywhere that says this. License plates do not have more rights than people. By "compliance expert" did you actually mean that you're a cop? Usually cops are the ones going around spreading legal misinformation like this.
You were so confident that you were correct that you brazenly posted something that contradicted your misinformation without reading it.
I meant that the article was talking about non audio cameras. What you are saying specifically depends on if you are in a single party state or not and what your state laws are.
What I said was it isn’t enforced but if somebody wanted to pursue you legally they could.
People in this thread would clearly be surprised about the things that are in the legal books. In the town I grew up in it was illegal to drive a car on a paved road. But that law was written at a time when horses were still more common than cars. Likewise the license plate law in my state was written long before cameras had the resolution to do that from a porch without a large zoom lens and was specifically written to prevent people putting security cameras on mailboxes and other places close to the street. This has created a legal gray area for ring cameras which is pretty much what the article and I in my original post was saying; It’s illegal but not enforced though if somebody wanted to pursue it they could.
Sure, but people STILL knock on the doors. They likely didn’t participate in a conspiracy to get it, sorry.
And the companies are funded by the CIA and other feds.
It's on purpose because if the government did it outright people would get made... So instead they are killing all trust in American government by hiding behind other companies.
The same thing the government is doing with crypto and other surveillance and ai....
Listen to some Whitney webb on YouTube she's all about talking about that stuff..
Pretty sure it's basically project 2025... America is funding these Epstein crime family types to basically build a new world lifestyle of most aspects of life being tracked more than they already are.