Dad’s chilling phonecall as smart doorbell hacked by stranger spying on family
A dad was disturbed to receive a chilling phone call from a stranger telling him that his family were being watched inside their home – after their smart doorbell was hacked.
Paul Davies began hearing disturbing voices in his house before a man began phoning him saying 'I'm waiting for you outside' and 'I want to batter you'.
Paul, who had three young children in the house, became terrified when the mysterious voice began mentioning three-year-old Alfie, six-year-old Florie and five-year-old Eva and asked 'can I look at your kids?'.
Now the dad is warning others that the cutting edge technology, which includes a doorbell camera linked to your mobile phone allowing you to view your front door when your not there, can go awry – and allow creepy hackers to terrify your family.
Paul, 38, told WalesOnline how he first knew something was up when he received an email telling him someone had logged into his account with Ring – a home security and smart home company owned by Amazon.
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The Port Talbot man said the first call came within hours.
A stranger began calling, saying he was watching them inside their house.
Mr Davies explains: "We were in the house, the kids had just gone to bed, and I had an email around 6.40pm off the Ring (home security company) website to say that there was a login from a different web address.
"I just assumed that was a fraudulent email. So I ignored it.
"About 20 minutes later I said I could hear voices. My wife, Lianne, said it was probably my son's toy coming through the baby monitor, but they were coming from outside. I had a look and there was nobody out there."
Paul said his phone started ringing around 8.30pm but there was no caller ID and a man's voice asked 'is that Paul?' when he answered.
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"He was being friendly at first asking me to come out the front, saying 'I'm waiting for you outside'. I looked outside the window – I couldn't see anyone there.
"I asked him 'Who are you?' and he said 'It doesn't matter, come outside'."
It was at this point that the man's voice became threatening.
"Then he said 'I want to batter you', and said, 'If you don't come out I'm going to steal your car'", said Paul.
Chillingly, the mysterious creep knew the family's car was white and asked Paul to go to the front door to pass him the keys.
Paul said: "I told him I wasn't going to come outside and hung up. My wife was quite worried and looking outside the window with me, but we couldn't see anyone.
"I didn't want to go out and leave the house unlocked with the three children in the house and my wife."
But it was the next call which made Paul shudder.
"He rung me straight back and said 'why won't you come outside?' I told him the kids were in bed and then he started asking 'can I look at your kids?'," he said.
"I was concerned I had upset someone and they were outside my house – to go to the bother to get someone's phone number and ring them, I thought they'd have to have a big grudge.
"I wasn't sure if someone was watching the house and pretending they were on my drive and if they were, how far did they want to take it?
"They did no harm, but when they asked to see my kids, you think there are some twisted people out there. You can also get internal cameras, so I'm just thankful that we don't have those."
Eventually Paul and wife Lianne had a lightbulb moment – the anonymous hacker was reading off details from their Ring account.
Paul said: "During the phone call, the man said my street address, but he got the house number wrong. It was the number that the doorbell was registered to.
"We put in the number of another house in the street because Ring didn't pick up our actual house number.
"So with that and the email we started to piece things together.
"I got the Ring app up on my phone. Any time someone live views you, you can see and [the account had been] live viewed about four of five times in under 20 minutes."
The doorbell camera is triggered by motion and records footage which can then be viewed at a later time.
And it was a piece of information the caller revealed that showed what they may have been able to view.
Paul said: "On the phone, the man also said 'I like your blue coat' – I wasn't wearing a blue coat at the time, but I wore it at about 4.30pm that day when I came in from taking the kids to Margam Park, which they could have seen.
"Then I realised they had been recording their own voices while using the doorbell as a camera – which is probably why I heard voices earlier on in he day."
Paul eventually phoned police.
They made a log of it and we saw that there was a data breach back in December where people's data was stolen," Paul added.
"Since then it seems [Ring] has brought in two-step sign in authentication, which I have now activated and have changed all my passwords on everything."
A spokesperson for South Wales Police said: "We received a report of an incident of suspicious phones call and a door bell camera being hacked in Taibach on January 19 at about 9.30pm.
"We are carrying out enquiries and are reminding people to be aware of what steps they can take to protect themselves online – lots of advice can be found at getsafeonline.org ."
Paul also spoke with Ring and the company promised him they are investigating after the chilling ordeal.
A Ring spokesperson said: "While our investigation is ongoing, we do not have any evidence that this incident is related to a breach or compromise of Ring’s system or network.
"It is not uncommon for bad actors to harvest data from other company's data breaches and create lists like this so that other bad actors can attempt to gain access to other services.
"We’ve notified customers whose accounts we have identified as exposed and have reset their passwords. In addition, we are continuing to monitor for and block potentially unauthorised login attempts into Ring accounts.
"We've also contacted all Ring customers, encouraging them to enable two-factor authentication, change their passwords, and follow important best practices for keeping their accounts secure."
The best practices can be found on the Ring website.
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