How to give your Ring video doorbell and camera a privacy checkup | Kurt the CyberGuy
The short version: Kurt the CyberGuy's Ring privacy checkup is useful, but locking down your doorbell does nothing about the ALPR cameras scanning your plate on public roads.
Our Take
Credit to Kurt the CyberGuy for walking viewers through tightening up Ring settings and understanding how Amazon has scaled back police access to doorbell footage. That's a real, practical win for anyone who owns one of these devices, and more people should know these settings exist.
But let's be clear about what this fixes and what it doesn't. Ring cameras are ones you buy, install, and can delete footage from or unplug entirely. The privacy fight around Flock Safety and other ALPR networks is different in kind: these are government-and-vendor-operated cameras bolted to poles on public streets, logging every plate that passes whether you consent or not, then feeding that data into searchable databases shared across agencies with little oversight. A privacy checkup on your own front door doesn't touch any of that.
If anything, stories like this can create a false sense that surveillance is something you can opt out of with a few taps in an app. It isn't, not when the cameras belong to someone else and sit on public infrastructure you have no control over. Check our map to see what's tracking you where you live, and hit take action if you want to push back on ALPR deployment in your community.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of KurttheCyberGuy, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.