Ring cameras hacked: How to prevent spying on your home

NEW YORK -- Days after Mississippi parents spoke out about hackers using a Ring security camera to harass an 8-year-old in her room, more worried families say hackers are targeting them too.

Edward Slaughter from Waterbury, Connecticut, told WTNH his mother-in-law heard a voice from her room. When he reviewed security footage from his Ring app, he heard a stranger's voice saying, "Come here. Come here."
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"Soon as I heard the voice, my heart dropped ... Really the worst feeling you could ever feel. It feels like there's nothing that you can do," he said.

In another incident inside a home on Staten Island, 13-year-old Blake was doing homework at the table when he heard, "Hello, I see you. How you doing, how's your day?"

Blake then gave a fake name and tried to unplug the camera. However, straight from a horror movie, the stranger's voice then followed him as he ran through the foyer to call his mother. His mom raced home. Police are now investigating.

A similar story played out in Cape Coral, Florida, when a Ring doorbell hacker was recorded making racist comments to a homeowner.
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"Did your child come out black or light skinned, what?" the hacker is heard saying.

And in Wichita, Kansas, Ashley and Jake Norris said a threatening hacker was telling their family he knew where they lived.



"Our daughter is still creeped out," Ashley said.

Despite this uptick in hacks, Ring told ABC News these appear to be isolated incidents where hackers gain access to usersnames and passwords. Here's how you can prevent this from happening to you:

Protect your WiFi with a password. Start simple!

Turn on automatic updates on apps. This way, apps like Ring will have up-to-date security measures installed.

Use unique passwords for sensitive accounts. If someone hacks into one of your accounts, chances are they will see if it works on other sites.

Use strong passwords. Make sure to include different cases, numbers, and symbols.

Use a password manager. It's impossible to remember every single password. Password managers like LastPass can serve as a master vault for all passwords.

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In a statement, Ring said:

Customer trust is important to us and we take the security of our devices seriously. While we are still investigating this issue and are taking appropriate steps to protect our devices based on our investigation, we are able to confirm this incident is in no way related to a breach or compromise of Ring's security.

Due to the fact that customers often use the same username and password for their various accounts and subscriptions, bad actors often re-use credentials stolen or leaked from one service on other services. As a precaution, we highly and openly encourage all Ring users to enable two-factor authentication on their Ring account, add Shared Users (instead of sharing login credentials), use strong passwords, and regularly change their passwords.

For more information from Ring, click here