One Florida family wasn’t even safe in their own home after a hacker took over their surveillance camera on Sunday night.
Josefine Brown, who lives in Cape Coral, Fla., was at home with her family when a loud alarm suddenly began to sound from their Ring security camera and a voice began spewing racial slurs.
In black-and-white footage of the incident, a loud alarm can be heard playing over a speaker.
Brown’s husband, who is wandering around his kitchen and living room area, seems to be attempting to turn off the alarm when a voice comes from the device and begins saying racial slurs about the couple’s biracial son.
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“Is your kid a baboon, like the monkey?” the hacker says.
Their 15-year-old son never appears on the screen, leading Brown to believe the hacker had been watching them for much longer than they realized.
As the hacker continues to taunt the family for nearly three minutes, the batteries are eventually ripped from the camera.
The taunting has ended, but the effects of the incident still reverberate with the family.
“I was scared. I didn’t know who that is, how long he’d been watching us and I’m still scared now because I don’t have any answers,” she said.
According to NBC, the Brown family contacted Ring to inquire about what had happened. In an email response, the company said its security team had detected an email address and password from one of the family’s external accounts was “exposed in a data breach.”
“We are still investigating this issue and are taking appropriate steps to protect our devices based on our investigation,” Ring said in a statement to NBC. “We are able to confirm this incident is in no way related to a breach or compromise of Ring’s security.”
The company added that people often use the same email and password for various accounts, making it easier for people to hack into other systems.
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Unfortunately, this kind of security breach isn’t uncommon.
A Tennessee family got the scare of their life after their eight-year-old daughter’s Ring camera was hacked.
It was only up for four days before the girl began being taunted by a hacker, who would also play eerie music over the speaker system.
“I did a lot of research on these before I got them,” mom Ashley LeMay told WNDU. “You know, I really felt like it was safe.”
Her daughter, Alyssa LeMay, heard a sound coming from her room. In video footage shared with the broadcast station, a man can be heard saying: “I’m your best friend. I’m Santa Claus.”
LeMay, like the Brown family, also contacted Ring, who she said told her that safety and security are their No. 1 priority.
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