Family Says Hacker Taunted Their 8-Year-Old Daughter On Ring Camera

A family got quite the scare when a stranger accessed a Ring camera set up in their daughter's room.

The LeMay family installed Ring security cameras to keep tabs on their young daughters but got quite the scare when they heard a strange voice talking to their children.

You can hear the little girl respond to the voice, asking "Who is that?"

You can also hear a man responding that he is her "best friend." At another point, he claimed to be Santa Claus and gave the girl instructions to destroy her room while he played music for her. In one of the more chilling parts of the surveillance footage, you hear the little girl scream out for her mother.

Ashley LeMay said that the scariest part of the situation for her was thinking about the possibility of the hacker watching her daughters changing or sleeping.

They could have seen all kinds of things.

Ring says they are still looking into the matter, suggesting that users use their two-factor authentication and a strong password.

While we are still investigating this issue and are taking appropriate steps to protect our devices based on our investigation, we are able to confirm this incident is in no way related to a breach or compromise of Ring’s security.

This isn't the only instance where a family has experienced their Ring cameras being hacked by total strangers. There have been cases of hackers taunting, harassing, even hurling racial slurs at unsuspecting Ring users. Other brands of smart cameras and even thermostats have been hacked in a similar fashion.

So how do you avoid this? Companies like Google (Nest) and Ring both say that the main cause behind the hacking issue is customers "using compromised passwords" that were "exposed in breaches on other websites."

Do you have a Ring or Nest type camera—and if so, have you ever experienced anything similar to this? Share your story in the comments.