12 ANDROID ADVISOR • ISSUE 71
found no evidence that the collected data is being
used for any nefarious or illicit purposes.
At the very least, Ring’s list of third-party analytics
services appears to be out of date. Last updated in
May 2018, it lists only four platforms, just one of which
(Mixpanel) was identified by EFF’s report. Mixpanel
lists Expedia, Uber, Twitter and Ancestry among its
26,000-plus clients, and is used by the Ring app to
highlight new features as they are made available.
Ring does allow users to opt out of data collection
from the services listed, but it’s not very user-friendly.
Hopefully, that will change with the – at the time
of writing – imminent launch of a new Control Centre
dashboard, which should allow users to control their
privacy and security settings from within the Ring app,
and offer transparency as to how Ring keeps its data
private and secure, including third-party services.
