Amazon Ring now lets users opt out of receiving police video requests

Enlarge / Your local police might like to interest you in this product. (credit: Amazon)

Amazon's Ring line of cloud-connected home surveillance equipment has for several months faced steep criticism not only for its nearly 900 "partnerships" with law enforcement agencies but also for lax account protections that put users' privacy at risk. Now, the company is hoping to assuage concerns from civil rights advocates, privacy advocates, lawmakers, and some users with a slate of updates.

Ring a few days ago began pushing an update to all users that creates a new "control center" in the Ring app. The control center adds several account and camera privacy settings to Ring and brings them all together into one area.

Among the new settings is an option to check for or enable two-factor authentication on one's Ring account. Ring did not previously require users to set up two-factor authentication on setup or prompt them to do so later. The lack of heavy two-factor usage was implicated in a wave of Ring camera hacks that began late last year.

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