Sina Tech News reported in the early morning of January 10, Beijing time. According to foreign media reports,AmazonsRing, its smart doorbell manufacturer, said a few days ago that the company has fired four employees because they watched more customer videos than allowed.

There were reports last year that since Ring began forming a team called “Ring Labs” in Ukraine in 2016, the team has had almost “unrestricted” access to video taken by Ring cameras stored on Amazon's cloud storage service.

Last November, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden (Ron Wyden), Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen (Chris Van Hollen), Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey (Ed Markey), Delaware Senator Chris Coons (Chris Coons), and Michigan Senator Gary Peters (Gary Peters) sent a letter to Ring requesting more information on how the company retains and protects customer data and video.

In response, Ring wrote to lawmakers earlier this week. Amazon's vice president for public policy Brian Huseman (Brian Huseman) revealed in a letter that in the past four years, there have been four casescomplaintsIt involved its employees in obtaining Ring video data.

For this reason, Ring has also fired four employees because they watched more customer videos than they were allowed to.

In the letter, Hughman said, “Although everyone involved in these events was authorized to view the video data, the number of attempts to access this data was beyond what was necessary for them to perform their duties.” In each case, as soon as Ring was informed of the alleged conduct, Ring immediately investigated the incident and fired the employee after determining that it had violated company policy.

Hughman also added that Ring is now limiting “such data access to fewer team members” and will continue to review access to these privileges to determine “whether they continue to need access to customer information.”

At the end of February 2018, Amazon acquired the smart doorbell manufacturer Ring, hoping to further expand into the smart home market. There are reports that the deal is worth around $1 billion. (Li Ming)