The Ring lawsuit that produced actual consumer refunds was the Federal Trade Commission’s 2023 enforcement action against the Amazon-owned camera company, which ended with a $5.8 million payout after the agency found that Ring let employees snoop on customers’ videos and failed to protect accounts from hackers. That case sits alongside a string of private lawsuits over hacked cameras, undisclosed subscription fees in California, and the company’s collection of facial recognition data.1FTC. Ring, LLC
The FTC Case and What Ring Paid
The FTC filed its complaint on May 31, 2023, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, charging Ring with deceptive and unfair practices in how it handled video from customers’ home security cameras. The court entered a stipulated order resolving the case on June 16, 2023. Ring agreed to pay $5.8 million for consumer refunds and neither admitted nor denied the allegations.2FTC. Stipulated Order for Injunction and Monetary Judgment, FTC v. Ring LLC
The complaint described two broad problems. First, before July 2017, Ring gave every employee and Ukraine-based contractor unrestricted access to every customer’s recordings, stored unencrypted on Ring’s network. One male employee used that access over several months in 2017 to view thousands of videos from at least 81 female users, targeting cameras labeled for bedrooms and bathrooms. A separate 2018 incident involved another male employee viewing a female colleague’s stored footage without permission. The FTC also alleged Ring used customer videos to train algorithms without notice or consent until January 2018.3ABC News. Ring Security Cameras Gave Employees Full Access to Customer Videos4FTC. FTC Says Ring Employees Illegally Surveilled Customers, Failed to Stop Hackers From Taking Control of Users’ Cameras
Second, the FTC said Ring failed to protect against credential stuffing and brute force attacks even after internal warnings, security researcher reports, and media coverage. Multi-factor authentication was not implemented until 2019, and the agency called that rollout “sloppy.” Roughly 55,000 U.S. customer accounts were compromised. Attackers accessed stored videos, live streams, or profiles for at least 910 of them, held access for more than a month in at least 20 cases, and used the cameras’ two-way audio to harass and threaten users, including children and elderly people.4FTC. FTC Says Ring Employees Illegally Surveilled Customers, Failed to Stop Hackers From Taking Control of Users’ Cameras
Who Got a Refund and How Much
The FTC began sending refunds in April 2024, distributing more than $5.6 million to 117,044 consumers through PayPal.5FTC. FTC Sends Refunds to Ring Customers Stemming From 2023 Settlement Because money remained after the first round, the agency sent a second round of 80,552 payments totaling over $1.5 million by August 2025 to consumers who had accepted their first payment. PayPal payments had to be accepted within 30 days and physical checks cashed within 90 days.6FTC. Ring Refunds
Eligible consumers generally did not need to file a claim. The FTC obtained a list of affected customers directly from Ring, so payments went out automatically to people the company identified.7Newsweek. FTC Ring Refund Privacy Breach Settlement The refund program is now closed to new claims, and there is no ongoing FTC refund process for Ring customers to apply to.
What Ring Has to Do Going Forward
The 2023 order also imposed obligations on Ring that last 20 years and affect anyone who owns or buys a Ring device today. The company had to delete all customer videos and face embeddings obtained before March 2018, along with any models or algorithms derived from that data. It must run a comprehensive privacy and security program that includes encryption of recordings in transit and at rest, mandatory multi-factor authentication for employees and customers, tight limits on human review of video, and regular vulnerability testing. Independent security assessments are required every two years, and Ring must notify the FTC of any future unauthorized access affecting 10 or more accounts. The company is barred for 20 years from misrepresenting how it accesses or discloses video data or the security of its products.2FTC. Stipulated Order for Injunction and Monetary Judgment, FTC v. Ring LLC
Class Actions Over Hacked Cameras
Before the FTC acted, customers had already sued. A January 2020 class action, Lemay et al. v. Ring LLC, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Plaintiffs alleged Ring sold “fatally flawed” devices and failed to require basic protections like two-factor authentication, unknown-IP verification, and brute-force safeguards. The complaints described an eight-year-old girl in Mississippi harassed by a hacker posing as Santa Claus, a Florida family targeted with racial slurs, a Texas couple threatened with “termination” unless they paid a $350,000 Bitcoin ransom, and a 13-year-old boy tracked through multiple cameras in his home.8ClassAction.org. Ring Doorbell Camera Invasion of Privacy Lawsuit9Mashable. Ring Class Action Lawsuit Hacking Security
A separate proposed class action, Orange v. Ring LLC and Amazon.com, Inc., was filed in December 2019 in the same court, seeking $5 million on claims including negligence, invasion of privacy, and breach of implied warranty. Ring responded to hacking reports by blaming customers for reusing weak passwords rather than acknowledging system-level flaws.10ABC News. Amazon, Ring Face Million-Dollar Proposed Class Action Lawsuit
Facial Recognition and Biometric Suits
Ring has also been sued over how it handles faces captured on camera. In Wise v. Ring LLC, filed August 2020 in federal court in Seattle, the plaintiff alleged Ring violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act by collecting facial geometry scans of visitors and passersby without written consent, using those scans to build a facial recognition system, and giving employees broad access to footage for manual tagging. In August 2022, the court denied Ring’s motion to dismiss and allowed the case to proceed.11Top Class Actions. Ring Class Action Lawsuit Says Video Doorbells Violate Privacy Law12ClassAction.org. Class Action Claims Ring Captures Facial Scans of Customers, Visitors Without Consent
A newer case was filed in June 2026 in federal court in Seattle by Virginia resident Charles Sigwalt, targeting Ring’s “Familiar Faces” feature. The complaint alleges the feature stores images of passersby and collects facial recognition data without consent, claiming “millions of other Americans passed by a Ring security camera and unknowingly had their facial recognition information collected.” The suit seeks at least $5 million and class-action status. Amazon declined to comment, though it had previously said face data from the feature is encrypted, never shared, and that unidentified faces are automatically removed after 30 days.13TechCrunch. Amazon Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Ring Facial Recognition Feature14Idaho Business Review. Amazon Ring Sued Over Facial Recognition Privacy in Seattle
The California Protect Plan Settlement
A separate consumer suit, Jack et al. v. Ring LLC, was filed in November 2020 in San Francisco Superior Court. Plaintiffs alleged Ring failed to disclose at purchase that certain doorbells and cameras required a paid “Protect Plan” subscription, $3 a month or $30 a year, to record, play back, or view video snapshots. Ring agreed to a $1.8 million settlement covering California residents who bought qualifying products at brick-and-mortar stores by dates ranging from October 2020 to May 2021. Payouts were small: $3 for one device, $6 for two, $9 for three or more, one payment per household. The claim deadline was May 22, 2025, and has passed.15ClassAction.org. Ring Settlement Resolves Protect Plan Class Action Lawsuit in California16Consumer Action. Ring Protect Plan Settlement17Angeion Group. Ring California Protect Plan Settlement Long Form Notice
Police Data Sharing and Congressional Scrutiny
Ring’s legal problems have unfolded next to sustained scrutiny of its relationships with police. Senator Edward Markey opened an investigation in September 2019 and reported that Ring had partnerships with over 400 police departments, with no rules against officers storing footage indefinitely, sharing it with third parties, or requesting videos without any evidentiary standard. The company also declined to commit to not selling biometric data or to making end-to-end encryption the default.18Office of Senator Ed Markey. Senator Markey Investigation Into Amazon Ring Doorbell Reveals Egregiously Lax Privacy Policies and Civil Rights Protections
By July 2022, 2,161 law enforcement agencies were enrolled in Ring’s Neighbors app. Amazon disclosed that year for the first time that it had provided Ring footage to police 11 times without user consent, invoking an emergency exception for situations involving “imminent danger of death or serious physical injury.”19PBS NewsHour. Amazon Handed Ring Doorbell Footage to Police Without User Consent20Office of Senator Ed Markey. Senator Markey’s Probe Into Amazon Ring Reveals New Privacy Problems
In January 2024, Ring retired the “Request for Assistance” tool that had let police request footage directly from users through the Neighbors app. At least 2,500 police agencies had used it.21NPR. Ring Will No Longer Allow Police to Request Users’ Doorbell Camera Footage In October 2025, Ring announced a partnership with surveillance company Flock Safety that would have let users opt in to sharing footage with law enforcement through Flock’s platform. After pushback from Senator Markey, Senator Ron Wyden, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the arrangement was cancelled before launch. Ring said no customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety.22BBC. Ring and Flock Safety Cancel Surveillance Partnership