Use a Ring doorbell? The app might share your data with Facebook and Google, report says

If you use Amazon’s Ring app, your personal data may be getting shared, a report says.

On Monday, Electronic Frontier Foundation — a nonprofit that champions digital civil liberties — shared results of its investigation into how the Ring app for Android handles information.

The findings? Not so great, EFF says.

Amazon’s Ring app for Android is chock-full of “third-party trackers sending out a plethora of customers’ personally identifiable information,” according to the report.

Four marketing and analytic companies — including Facebook — were found to receive information including names, mobile carriers, IP addresses, persistent identifiers and sensor data, the report says.

If that doesn’t sound like a big deal, EFF disagrees, explaining in the report that these small pieces of information can be knit together to “form a unique picture of the user’s device.” The bigger picture makes it easier for trackers to “spy” on what users do online, the report says.

Google receives information from the Ring app through Crashalytics, a crash-logging service it owns, according to the report, but EFF says it doesn’t know how much data is shared, according to the report.

In a statement to Gizmodo, Ring says third-party services help improve the app.

“Like many companies, Ring uses third-party service providers to evaluate the use of our mobile app, which helps us improve features, optimize the customer experience, and evaluate the effectiveness of our marketing,” a Ring spokesperson told the outlet.

Gizmodo also reported that Ring’s privacy policy does, indeed, state that it uses third-party services and includes a list of trackers. However, Facebook isn’t listed in the privacy notice.

To read the full report from EFF, click here.

This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 12:44 PM.