Update, July 20, 2025: This story, originally published on July 19, has been updated with information concerning hundreds of comments from Ring doorbell users who claim that unknown devices logged into their accounts on May 28, along with the responses from Ring itself.

Hot on the heels of Amazon emailing all 220 million Prime customers with a warning that their accounts are under attack, comes a claim that users of the hugely popular Ring doorbell were hacked on May 28. All of them. The claims, posted to TikTok and Reddit, have gone viral. Not least as they do, indeed, appear to show multiple unauthorised device logins all on May 28. So, has your doorbell been hacked, and if not, what the heck did happen?

Not so many years ago, if someone claimed that their doorbell had been hacked, then you would be looking for evidence of tinfoil hat wear. That all changed when the Internet of Things arrived, connecting just about any device you can think of in the race to be ‘smart.’ Of course, tinfoil hats and TikTok do have something of a history, so when I started getting emails from worried readers asking if the TikTok videos they had seen, warning that Ring doorbells had suffered a mass hacking attack on May 28, were true, I was tempted to dismiss it initially. The one thing that prompted me to investigate further, however, was the evidence. These videos, as well as postings to Reddit making the same claims, included the receipts in the form of screenshots showing a mass of seemingly unauthorized device connections. All dated May 28. Could an attacker, maybe with access to your account passwords, really have pulled off the hack of the century?

Of course, I then checked my own Amazon Ring doorbell account to see if this was just some elaborate hoax, and, lo and behold, there were the same myriad logins from devices all dated May 28. Something was, indeed, not right.

The difference, however, between my logs and the claims being made online, was that I recognized all the devices involved. Some couldn’t have connected on May 28, it has to be said, as I no longer owned them at that point. This did mean that a hacking event was hugely unlikely in my professional opinion. It was, I concluded, far more likely to be an update glitch behind the scenes. And Amazon has now confirmed that this was indeed, it said, the case. A July 18 posting from the Ring team stated: “We are aware of an issue where information is displaying inaccurately in Control Center. This is the result of a backend update, and we’re working to resolve this. We have no reason to believe this is the result of unauthorized access to customer accounts.”

Following a posting from the official Ring account to Facebook, pointing users to the aforementioned link and statement, the resulting comments have gone stratospheric. In little more than 36 hours, there are almost 800 comments, and the vast majority are arguing that Amazon has got it wrong as far as the Ring hacking claims are concerned.

Despite Ring responding to many of these users to explain the situation further and confirm that it only became aware of the issue on July 17, that doesn’t seem to have slowed the complaints down. “The devices you see listed in your Authorized Client Devices were devices that you have previously logged into your account with,” Ring stated, adding that these “could include devices that you no longer use.” That would gel with my own experience, but certainly not with everyone’s, it would appear.

Some have complained that their accounts must have been hacked because they are showing logins from countries they have never been to. Something that Ring has explained as also being caused by the backend update bug, which meant that “information is displaying inaccurately in Control Center for some neighbors,” and it is trying to resolve this. “We have no reason to believe this is the result of unauthorized access to your account,” Ring has still insisted.

One area that I find it hard not to take issue with Ring about, though, is the complaint that users only found out about this “bug” through a TikTok video or online articles such as the one you are reading now. No emails to reassure customers, no direct communication at all. “Security is our utmost priority, and we can assure you there was not any type of hack or data breach,” Ring said in response to one such complaint pointing out the company is quick enough to contact them if a payment doesn’t go through. If Ring learns anything from this event, apart from whatever the bug was and how not to repeat it, then I trust it will be in employing a more user-centric communications policy when security issues emerge.