personal tech
Ring gets buzzed by class action for collecting visitors' faces without consent
The latest in a series of raised eyebrows over Familiar Faces and other AI ventures
Perhaps you stopped by a friend's house and rang their Ring doorbell. Or maybe you walked past a neighbor's front door on your way somewhere else. According to a new class action lawsuit, Ring's Familiar Faces feature may have captured your face and generated facial-recognition data from it without your knowledge. A Virginia man is now suing Amazon and its home security subsidiary, alleging violations of state laws.Charles Sigwalt claims that Ring's Familiar Faces, an AI-powered facial-recognition feature that identifies frequent visitors and creates profiles for them, collects biometric data from people without their knowledge or consent.Launched in December 2025 in the US, and April 2026 in the UK, Familiar Faces allows customers to create up to 50 profiles belonging to frequent visitors, allowing their doorbell to tell them who exactly is at their door, rather than just telling them that someone, anyone, pressed the buzzer.
In Ring’s product marketing, under a “Built with Privacy in Mind” heading, it clearly states that Familiar Faces is an opt-in feature. It is not enabled by default.
