Ring Doorbell App Packed with Third-Party Trackers

#News(Security) [ via IoTGroup ]

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Ring Doorbell App Packed with Third-Party Trackers

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An investigation by EFF of the Ring doorbell app for Android found it to be packed with third-party trackers sending out a plethora of customers’ personally identifiable information (PII).
Four main analytics and marketing companies were discovered to be receiving information such as the names, private IP addresses, mobile network carriers, persistent identifiers, and sensor data on the devices of paying customers.
The danger in sending even small bits of information is that analytics and tracking companies are able to combine these bits together to form a unique picture of the user’s device.
For consumers, this image has cultivated a sense of trust in Ring that should be shaken by the reality of how the app functions: not only does Ring mismanage consumer data, but it also intentionally hands over that data to trackers and data miners.
Information delivered to Facebook (even if you don’t have a Facebook account) includes time zone, device model, language preferences, screen resolution, and a unique identifier ( anon_id ), which persists even when you reset the OS-level advertiser ID.
AppsFlyer, a big data company focused on the mobile platform, is given a wide array of information upon app launch as well as certain user actions, such as interacting with the “Neighbors” section of the app.
This information includes your mobile carrier, when Ring was installed and first launched, a number of unique identifiers, the app you installed from, and whether AppsFlyer tracking came preinstalled on the device.
Users’ full names, email addresses, device information such as OS version and model, whether bluetooth is enabled, and app settings such as the number of locations a user has Ring devices installed in, are all collected and reported to MixPanel.
MixPanel is briefly mentioned in Ring’s list of third party services, but the extent of their data collection is not

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