Privacy
Ring AI apps let landlords count tenants; WA facial recognition trial ends with 122 arrests
Ring's third-party AI apps turn cameras on tenants, a WA facial recognition trial scanned 1.38 million faces, and mSecure warns customers after a breach.
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Ring’s third-party AI apps let landlords count tenants and flag house rule violations
Ring’s app ecosystem now includes third-party AI tools that analyze camera footage for landlords and businesses, not just security. ZoneGauge, at $5 per month, counts people in a monitored space to flag possible overcrowding; GuardCat, at $8 per month, summarizes guest check-outs, cleaning visits and potential house rule violations. Both require a Ring subscription plus the extra monthly fee. LawnWatch ($3) detects toys and dog waste, while ProofClock and TimeStack track worker arrivals and time on site. The apps raise privacy questions: automated alerts do not prove a rule was broken, footage may lack context, and recording people in private spaces or collecting personal data without legal grounds can violate privacy law. Airbnb already bans indoor cameras in listed properties.
Topics: Smart devices privacy
Western Australia facial recognition trial scans 1.38 million faces, leading to 122 arrests
A five-month Western Australia police trial of real-time facial recognition ended Saturday after scanning 1,380,882 faces across 100 deployments at 43 locations, leading to 122 arrests and engagements with 146 registered sex offenders. Three operations at the Perth royal show scanned 223,749 faces, producing 15 alerts, three arrests and seven interactions with registered sex offenders. Police reported nine incorrect alerts, an error rate of 0.00065%, and Commissioner Col Blanch said no one was arrested or complained over false matches. Civil Liberties Australia’s Bill Rowlings disputed that figure, arguing the real error rate depends on how many of the 122 arrests lead to convictions. The Human Rights Law Centre questioned whether scanning over a million people was proportionate. Surveillance vans are off the road pending an internal evaluation.
Topics: Facial recognition
mSecure breach prompts password reset warnings for current and former users
mSeven Software is urging current and former mSecure password manager customers to change passwords, reset two-factor authentication and remove passkeys after a cyberattack. In a November 3 notification, the company said it found suspicious activity involving the mSecure application, launched an investigation and engaged external cybersecurity experts, but did not say which systems were compromised or how many users were affected. Customers reported support responses saying a hacker stole an encrypted database from mSecure Cloud holding data on current and former users, with no evidence the attacker accessed the encrypted contents. The incident appears limited to users syncing through mSecure Cloud. mSecure uses AES-256 encryption and a zero-knowledge architecture, but stolen vaults can still be cracked offline if master passwords are weak.
mSecure password manager hack prompts password reset warnings →
Topics: Password security
Global data breaches rise 13% as UK leaked accounts more than double
Surfshark recorded 121.8 million breached accounts worldwide in Q3 2026, up 13.2% from the previous quarter. The UK overtook France as Europe’s most breached country after its leaked account count more than doubled to 5.8 million, a 121.6% jump, during a quarter that included ExfilSquad’s claims against the Police National Legal Database and the Department for Education. Ukraine climbed from 47th to 6th globally with 2.6 million breached accounts. The US remained the most breached country with 38.1 million leaked accounts, 31% of the total, followed by Brazil (7 million), the UK (5.8 million), India (5.5 million) and Australia (3.1 million). Estonia had the highest breach density at 118 accounts per 1,000 people. Surfshark’s Tomas Stamulis warned stolen data can sit hidden before criminals use it.
Global data breaches jump 13% as UK leaks more than double — and Ukraine rockets up the rankings →
US contractor admits passing top-secret intelligence to Ethiopia for over two years
Abraham Teklu Lemma, 54, of Silver Spring, Maryland, pleaded guilty to conspiring to transmit national defence information to the Ethiopian government, the US Department of Justice said. Lemma, an IT contractor who worked for the State Department, the Justice Department and the National Reconnaissance Office and held a Top Secret clearance, shared dozens of classified documents, photographs and notes from 2021 until his arrest in August 2023. Some material carried the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information classification. He smuggled information out in handwritten notes and used his IT administrator access to extract electronic documents, and in some messages urged Ethiopian officials to take military action, writing on December 18, 2021: „Please send drones.” Sentencing is set for April 14, 2027.
Topics: State-sponsored hacking