Serious Safety Flaw - please correct!

Just installed a new Ring System - Doorbell, wired Cams, Sensors, etc. Covers our entire house. Love it so far.

However…

There is a SERIOUS flaw in the system as far as protection that I feel needs to be addressed ASAP.

The Flaw:

It seems that the Ring sensors go into a ‘wait’ mode of about 3 minutes (after sensing motion) before they re-arm. Not sure why.

The Exploit:

Ring gives you a false sense of security when you arm the system (in either ‘Home’ or ‘Away’ mode). It gives you the green checkmark saying all sensors are armed, which would make me confidently leave my house, etc. - thinking I’m protected.

However…

The 3 (or so) minute sensor delay is still in effect - meaning that the motion sensors will NOT pick up anything or ACTIVATE THE ALARM during that time period.

Yikes!!!

That means that it would be possible for someone to break into a motion-sensor protected area, steal a bunch of stuff, kill my pet, a person(!) etc. and make a clean get away.

3 minutes may not seem like a long time - until your life is in danger - then it is an eternity.

I realize this would be an outlier scenario. But it should be an no-brainer one for a device that is supposed to protect you 24/7.

PLEASE address this!

2 Likes

Good catch, major kudos

Hi neighbors!

We want to thank you for bringing up this important topic, and giving us the opportunity to explain how Ring Alarm Motion Detectors are designed to work.

Ring Alarm Motion Detectors are designed to be smart. They detect movement through rooms and hallways which an intruder would be likely to pass through, while allowing you and your family to move freely through your home.

When your Ring Alarm is disarmed, your sensor detects motion constantly, but will only notify you to the first detection. After three minutes of no activity, it will be “cleared” and ready to notify you again. The system is designed with this feature to greatly reduce the number of notifications when your Motion Detector is disarmed and reduce the drain on your battery. Rest assured, even though you’re not getting a constant stream of motion detection notifications, all movement is being detected.

If you arm your Ring Alarm before the Motion Detector has cleared, the Motion Detector will be armed and will not be bypassed. Ring Alarm is smart enough to know that as you exit your home you may trigger the Motion Detector, and you should not be confused with an intruder. After you leave your home and movement stops, the Motion Detector will clear as expected and be ready to detect movement. Any motion that is detected at that point will trigger the Alarm.

We recommend using both Contact Sensors and Motion Detectors to create a ring of security around your home. By using Contact Sensors at every entry point around your home, any intruder would be detected and set off the Alarm after your customizable Entry Delay.

If you’re still concerned, you can set your Entry and Exit Delays to 0 seconds, and only arm and disarm your Ring Alarm using only the app from outside your home. This would sound the alarm as soon as a door or window is opened, before an intruder has the chance to even enter your home. While we don’t recommend this option as it might increase the chances of a false alarm, you can configure these settings to give yourself peace of mind.

Note: Ring Motion Detectors also have a Test Mode, in which your sensor detects motion constantly and will notify you about every 15 seconds. This is designed to help you test for blind spots, pets, and other environmental triggers.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out with any further questions or concerns. Thank you!

3 Likes

Jennifer,

Thanks for the explanation. However, it does not match my experience. I just tested again:

  1. Moved in front of 3 Motion Sensors (kitchen, front entry, dining room).

  2. Moved to the top step of our basement stairs (where I am out of sight of all 3 sensors and all other sensors as well), and set the alarm to Home.

  3. Set a stopwatch and waited 90 seconds.

  4. Moved back into the field of view of the sensors.

Alarm did not go off.

I had to wait at least 2-3 minutes before the sensors were active and caught the motion.

PS - We have not pets, etc. and I was the only one in the house for the test.

I think that in ‘Home’ mode, the sensors should activate immediately - since I’m Home and know which ones not to activate by accident.

When you set the alarm to ‘Away’ it would make sense for the motion sensors to be active after the exit delay has expired. I’ll test that as well later today and post back.

I’m no security expert, but it makes sense for the motion sensors to disregard the 3 minute interval once the exit delay has expired. The system should assume that everyone has already left and any motion from that point forward should trigger the sensor regardless of the timeout period.

For example, let’s say that you arm the system and activate the 60 second exit delay. 30 seconds later, trigger a motion sensor on the way out the door. The motion sensor should rearm in another 30 seconds once the exit delay ends instead of 2.5 minutes to reach the end of the 3 minute “timeout” period.

2.5 minutes may not be a lot of time, but as OP said… its 2.5 minutes of being vulnerable that seems to be an easy fix.

I haven’t tested any of this myself, so I’ll be interested to know how it turns out.

I’ve not had a chance to do more testing - hope to do so in the next day or so. I will put my alarm in ‘self’ monitoring mode (to play it safe). I’ll test how the motion sensors react to the 'home ’ and ‘away’ modes and report back.

It would be interesting if others can test as well to see if it is a global issue.

Thanks, @SoriceConsulting. From my findings, the three minute wait time for motion detection seems to be an industry standard for alarm systems. But I’d like to point out that our Contact Sensors do have a customizable Entry Delay. If someone were to enter the home when armed in either Home or Away Mode, they would first trigger the Contact Sensor on the door or window before triggering the Motion Detector. At that point, the Alarm will sound as soon as the Entry Delay is over. You can set the Entry Delay to 0 seconds, in order to sound the Alarm immediately (keeping in mind that you may be more likely to accidentally trigger false alarms).

1 Like

Thanks Jennifer! Appreciate your keeping on top of this subject. My concern is from experience with our prior system (which we happily replaced with Ring!).

With that one, once we armed the system, the alarm would go off immediately if we stepped in front of a motion sensor (been there, done that by mistake).

That does not seem to be happening with Ring.

I will try and so some detailed testing tomorrow and post back my results for the community.

@SoriceConsulting wrote:

Jennifer,

Thanks for the explanation. However, it does not match my experience. I just tested again:

  1. Moved in front of 3 Motion Sensors (kitchen, front entry, dining room).

  2. Moved to the top step of our basement stairs (where I am out of sight of all 3 sensors and all other sensors as well), and set the alarm to Home.

  3. Set a stopwatch and waited 90 seconds.

  4. Moved back into the field of view of the sensors.

Alarm did not go off.

I had to wait at least 2-3 minutes before the sensors were active and caught the motion.

PS - We have not pets, etc. and I was the only one in the house for the test.

I think that in ‘Home’ mode, the sensors should activate immediately - since I’m Home and know which ones not to activate by accident.

When you set the alarm to ‘Away’ it would make sense for the motion sensors to be active after the exit delay has expired. I’ll test that as well later today and post back.

Im pretty sure the difference between Home and Away modes are that when you arm the alarm in Home mode it bypasses the motion sensors so you dont trip them since you are in the house and only the contact sensors are active. When you arm in Away mode (no one should be in the house) then all sensors are active.

This is how my Brinks home security worked and makes sense to me.

1 Like

Thanks johhnyd91.

I’m aware of the mode differences. You can selectively keep motions sensor armed when you are home - which is what we do. We have no pets/kids, so we keep some motion sensors armed in Home mode when we go to bed (i.e., you can walk around the second floor but not downstairs, as those motion sensors are active at night in Home mode).

Everyone,

I’ve done some testing and here are the results.

Home Mode:

> Move arond in front of Sensors which are set to be active in Home mode

> Set Ring to Home mode (which means some motion sensors are armed - see earlier posts)

> Go to a neutral space where no motion sensors can detect me

> Wait 2 minutes (timed via stopwatch)

> Walk in front of Sensors which should trigger an alarm (ie, active in Home mode)

Nothing. I kept moving in front of the Sensors that *should* be active. They did not trigger an alarm until the 4 minute mark (stopwatch timed).

What’s worse is that the same exact thing happenend in ‘Away’ mode, even though the exit delay is set to 30 seconds!

What?

If I tell Ring that I want all Sensors active after a 30 second exit grace period in ‘Away’ mode, why would the motion sensors need FOUR MINUTES to trigger an alarm??

This is a serious flaw. So much so that (even though we love other aspects of the system) I’d probably return it. However, I’ve taken a lot of time to deploy it, so I’m hoping that there will be firmware updates to address these shortcomings.

Again, this is a SERIOUS flaw. I can envision lawsuits over this - Ring gives you a green check mark saying ‘all sensors armed’, then the motion sensors can be INACTIVE for up to 4 minutes - way more than enough time for really bad things to happen.

Please Jennifer_Ring, get in touch with your Tech people and see what they say about firware updates to address this. Maybe let users choose when to have sensors activate in ‘Home’ and ‘Away’? I don’t care if it affects battey life - safety first.

Also, others reading this thread - please try and do your own testing to confirm my findings.

Thanks to all in the Community! Not complaining - just trying to make Ring the best home security system on the market…

1 Like

Have you tried changing the motion sensor sensistivity in the app?

Of the 3 in my test, 2 were set at maximum, the other was at the default (middle setting). I was literally walking around them, waving my arms, etc. I think it is just that they have a 3-4 minute delay before detecting motion after they last sense it (which doesn’t make sense - no pun intended :^)

I think when you arm the system (either Home or Away), the sensors should arm after the exit delay period you set. Ours is 30 seconds.

1 Like

Have you tried putting the motion sensors into test mode and seeing what responses come back while testing? Maybe just to rule out bad sensors.

I tested them all when setting up and before the alarm tests. Even so, in my tests I was trying to trigger 3 different sensors. They all triggered (ie, are working), but only after the 3-4 minute delay.

1 Like

Kind of disappointed that no one from Ring has commented on this. I think it is a serious issue. Let’s hope they post something soon. I’ll also be calling support as well to see where things stand.

1 Like

Thank you for your feedback @SoriceConsulting . As mentioned, we recommend using both Contact Sensors and Motion Detectors to create a ring of security around your home. By using Contact Sensors at every entry point around your home, any intruder would be detected and set off the Alarm after your customizable Entry Delay. We appreciate your feedback and have sent it to the team, but it appears that the Alarm is indeed working as designed.

Thanks Jennifer. I understand it is working as designed. I’m trying to point out what I feel is a serious security/safety flaw! I spoke to a representative on the phone a few days ago and he said you’ve gotten LOTS of calls about this issue.

No to repeat prior posts, but when the alarm is set (especially in Away Mode), I’m telling Ring that I am *leaving* the house in 30 seconds (our set exit delay). Why on earth would the system then wait 3-4 minutes to arm Motion Sensors?

Also, when set to Home Mode, I am, again, telling Ring that I will not be walking near the Motion Sensors I set to be armed when home. Again - why on earth would the system then wait 3-4 minutes to arm Motion Sensors?

Serious flaw. The green check mark saying all sensors are armed is an outright falsehood.

If someone broke in during that 3-4 minute ‘unarmed’ time period (through an area that is only protected by motion sensors) they could steal a bunch of stuff, hurt someone, etc. - which could be a serious liability issue for Ring.

At the vey least, please update the firmware so that I can choose to arm all motion sensors when the exit delay expires. Seems like such a simple fix.

2 Likes

While I don’t personally consider the three minut delay on the motion sensors to be a serious security breech, it would still be good to be able to set a zero delay. That way you could use the system as a panic button. I arm and disarm my system with Alexa commands . If I heard strange noises/voices and realized the system was disarmed, I would like to be able to voice control the system on with an immediate response to motion.

While I don’t personally consider the three minut delay on the motion sensors to be a serious security breech, it would still be good to be able to set a zero delay. That way you could use the system as a panic button. I arm and disarm my system with Alexa commands . If I heard strange noises/voices and realized the system was disarmed, I would like to be able to voice control the system on with an immediate response to motion.