I Hate my Ring Doorbell

I've had a Ring doorbell for a couple of years now and I have decided that I don't like it. I hate it so much that I don't have it connected to my home network any more and don't feel the need to fix it. Perhaps you feel different about your Ring doorbell.

Part of the problem is that the device just can't seem to stay connected to my home WiFi, hence why it is not connected now. If it was as simple as pushing a button, that would make it easy to fix. Unfortunately it would also make it easy for bad actors to disconnect it from your home network. When it falls off the network, I have to physically remove the device from the front of my house using a special wrench to get to the reset button. Then there are a number of steps to get it reconnected. If it was a bit more reliable, I wouldn't have to reconnect it all the time.

Another contributor to why I hate my Ring doorbell is that people refuse to use it. The thing is large enough you can't not see it yet strangers prefer to knock on my front door. Perhaps they don't want to leave a record of their visit, which happens when the doorbell is used. I don't know people's logic but I got a lot more doorbell rings before I replaced my old button with the Ring device.

Finally I hate all of the notifications that Ring sends me. We are expecting really hot weather Sunday and Monday this week, Ring seems to send me a notice about it every couple of hours. Today is Friday but this has been going on for the past 3 days. It is like the boy who cried wolf. My phone sends me a notification that sounds like a text message so I pull my phone out only to discover the same message sent two hours earlier. I've tried to go into settings and turn things down so I only get important messages like someone being at my front door. Unfortunately no matter what settings I use, it seems to be an all-or-nothing proposition.

I think the original concept behind the Ring doorbell is brilliant. Who wouldn't want to have a camera to see who is at the front door before you open it? The problem is that the service has been overloaded with features to the point nobody rings the doorbell any more and the add-on notifications are overly abundant. Perhaps it is time to hack the device so it does exactly what I want it to and doesn't link into Ring's stupid notifications.

Digital Privacy

This afternoon I checked my personal e-mail and received a message claiming to be from my company. While I work for Sony, my personal e-mail is through a domain that I own and it looks like another company. The message claimed to be from the admin account and said that I had 3 undelivered e-mails because they were SPAM. My e-mail account has a different filtering mechanism and I would never get an e-mail from the "admin". I had a link I could have clicked but I'm sure the results would have been nefarious. This is what is known as a Phishing attack. Paying attention helps ensure I don't inadvertently install a virus or malware on my computer. This has the potential of releasing all sorts of personal information to bad actors that can steal my identity, drain my bank account, and ruin my credit.

Your digital privacy is very important and you should do everything you can to protect it. Being aware of potential phishing attacks is only one step of many. I also limit the information I share with various websites where I have login accounts. I never provide my social security number nor do I provide my birthday. There are many websites that require a birthday simply to verify age. I use the same fictitious date for such occasions and avoid providing my real birthday if I can help it.

Another trick to maintaining your digital privacy is to limit your payment information. There are a lot of websites that want to make purchases as simple as possible and so they offer to store your credit card information. Then you just have to hit the "purchase" button and it automatically bills your credit card. I actually have my primary credit card memorized and re-enter the information every time I make a purchase from infrequent accounts. It only slows me down a few seconds but gives me piece of mind every time I receive an e-mail about websites being hacked and payment information stolen.

One final word of caution is to severely limit who has access to your bank account information. This includes debit cards. Once someone gets into your bank account, it is very difficult to get your money back once it is gone. By using credit cards for all payments, you have a level of protection that ensures you don't lose any money. You just need to notify your credit card company about fraudulent transactions and they will credit your account while they investigate. You may have to provide additional documentation but most credit card companies will catch the invalid purchases before you do.

Unfortunately there are some thieves out there and the ubiquity of the Internet makes it easy for a small number of bad guys to inflict harm on a large number of good ones. Taking your digital privacy seriously will help reduce damages. I just wish there was a sure-fire way to keep yourself 100% secure.  

A New Company Benefit: Identity Theft Protection

My company had a meeting today where they rolled out next year's changes to our benefits package. For the most part, things are better than in years previous and I can't complain about anything. One interesting new perk is that of identity theft protection. Interestingly enough I have been thinking about picking this up for myself and am happy to see I don't need to.

There are a number of companies providing identity theft protection with Lifelock being the most popular. If you go to their website, you will see that 1 in 4 people are victims of identity theft. Those are pretty high odds and I don't want to take that risk.

I am one of those people that prefers not to store credit card numbers with my online accounts. While it takes a bit more time as I have to manually add my payment information for any purchases I make from a website, it reduces the chance of a bad guy getting my financial information. Unfortunately there are a number of sites that insist on storing that information for me and so I am glad to have this new benefit. Hopefully other companies are following this trend and making it part of your benefits package. If not, now you know what to ask the next time your human resources department requests feedback.

Someone Is Watching

It is nice to see that Microsoft completely changed their mind with respect to being able to play used games on the XBox One. There are rumors circulating as to why this reversal took place, but I don't want to speculate. Their own site says they listened to their users and in my opinion, that is the right thing to do.

One advantage the XBox One has over the PS4 is that it comes bundled with the Kinect. With the PS4, you will have to shell out another $80 or so to get the equivalent feature. Including the Kinect will allow Microsoft to do all sorts of things for all of their users that a large number of PS4 users won't be able to do. For instance, when you are watching TV on your XBox One, the Kinect will be able to count the number of people in the room and be able to distinguish the relative ages of everyone. Think what a benefit that will be to the advertisers paying for commercials during your favorite shows. Whereas they used to have to go through expensive and error-prone services like Nielsen, they will have immediate feedback on their audience.

The XBox One will also always be listening to you. They say it is so it will turn on when it hears you say, "XBox On". However it can also be used to hear things like, "I love this game," or "This game blows." Just think, they will be able to take that information and feed it back to game developers to help them create better content for you to play.

Microsoft is also very concerned about security with their devices and would never let anyone have the ability to write a virus for the XBox that would allow it to listen in on your private conversations or watch what you are doing in the privacy of your own home. After all, their operating systems are known for being the most secure and immune to hacking or viruses. And we were told at launch that the XBox One would be running three different operating systems, one of which was a form of Windows.

Yep, I think these features are really awesome. Just as long as today is opposite day.

Digital Breadcrumbs

This morning's paper had an interesting article about how text messages have become today's equivalent of the "lipstick on the collar" as a sign of a cheating spouse. My first thought was how glad I was that I don't have to worry about that. My second thought was about how the general public is less anonymous than they realize.

Something that most people don't realize what information is tracked on the Internet. This BLOG site that I use is owned by Google and requires me to log in before I make a post. I generally don't bother to log out. That means whenever I do an Internet search on Google, they keep track of what I am looking for. I don't have anything to hide and so that doesn't bother me. Whenever I do a search for "Ham," Google could use previous search criteria to know that I am looking for information about "ham radio" and not "ham lunchmeat."

Another thing that most people don't realize is that websites have a fairly good idea of where you are physically located. I use a cable modem to log onto the Internet from home. My service provider assigns my cable modem a unique Internet protocol (IP) address. I don't pay to have a static address which means my IP address can change at any time. However it is rare to have that happen. Even then, the addresses assigned are specific to a local area. That means that websites can determine your location down to a several block area.

Again, I am not worried about a website knowing my IP address or approximately where I live. Once again, Google and other Internet search sites keep track of this information. Suppose I do a search for a seemingly innocent topic but decide to visit a questionable website. Now suppose one of my children does a similar search using a different computer in the house. My cable modem presents only a single IP address to Google. Based on my previous poor choice, there could be more questionable sites presented to my children.

If you take the time to sit down and run through a few other scenarios, it doesn't take much to figure out that it is not hard for law enforcement officials to determine who is downloading illegal copies of music or movies. Your Internet service provider also knows what content you are viewing from the false privacy of your own home. If you are like me and don't have any skeletons in your closet, then this shouldn't concern you. However if you are in the closet about how you like to look at pictures of skeletons in compromising postions, you might want to pick a new hobby. Especially if you are famous or plan on running for public office.