An Amazon logistics platform in Hauts-de-France.
(Illustration) -
AFP
Threats of death, sexual assault or demands for ransoms.
Users of Ring surveillance cameras, a subsidiary of Amazon, have been victims of hackers who hacked their equipment and managed to come into direct contact with them, reports
Futura Sciences
.
These intrusions would have been made possible by a security breach.
A total of 15 families have launched collective action in the United States against the company.
According to
The Guardian
, the hackers notably addressed a child, commenting on the way he played basketball.
A father and son heard a voice asking them what they were watching on television.
An elderly lady's camera told her she was going to die that night, and another woman's camera started playing a song from the horror film
Insidious
.
Devices incompatible with respect for privacy?
For Hassan Zavareei, lead lawyer in this case, many other families could be affected.
"This is probably the tip of the iceberg," he told The
Guardian
.
Ring, meanwhile, blames its customers and believes they should have chosen safer passwords, to which those affected respond that the company should impose more complex authentication.
This is not the first time that the Amazon subsidiary has been criticized for its security vulnerabilities.
Futura Sciences
recalls that at the end of 2019, 3,000 users had seen their data exposed.
Jeff Bezos' company also has agreements with the US police to give it access to camera images in more than 1,300 cities.
The deputy director of privacy group Fight for the Future told The
Guardian
that Ring was "incompatible with civil rights and democracy" and that these devices should no longer be marketed.
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