Oversight

Amazon Is an Even Bigger Threat to Privacy Than Facebook

With its Ring doorbell, the tech giant can now see what you buy, what you browse, and who you’re letting into your home

Trevor Timm
GEN
Published in
4 min readNov 8, 2019

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Credit: Grant Hindsley/Getty

“W“Where were you at 6 p.m. last night?” asked a marketing email sent to journalists immediately following Halloween last week. It was sent by Ring, Amazon’s doorstep surveillance system that sends video directly to the police.

“If you were trick-or-treating,” it continued, “you were part of the millions of people out ringing doorbells this Halloween!” On Instagram, Ring boasted about just how many millions of children it had recorded on video. Apparently, the company was hoping reporters would write a cute story; instead everyone was extremely disturbed.

But Ring is just one fiefdom in Amazon’s surveillance kingdom. The tech giant may already know everything you buy and everything you browse, and their Orwellian reach into society is only becoming worse.

Amazon has arguably become an even bigger threat to American’s privacy than Facebook.

Ring has been a growing source of controversy over the past few months, as its cameras have become more popular — likely without people fully knowing what they’ve signed up…

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GEN
GEN

Published in GEN

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Trevor Timm
Trevor Timm

Written by Trevor Timm

Trevor Timm is the executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation. His writing has appeared the New York Times, the Guardian, and the Intercept.