Ring adopts new TAKE encryption standard as cloud-feature default

Amazon’s smart home division, Ring, said Wednesday it is adopting a new encryption standard called TAKE (Throw Away the Key Encryption) as the default setting for video encryption and user control. The company says the standard lets it protect user privacy without relying on end-to-end encryption, which can restrict features such as video search, video description, and shared trusted users.

Ring says TAKE uses a rotating set of encryption keys that are temporarily stored in the cloud and can only be accessed by the company to power features users have active; once a request is completed, the company deletes the keys within 24 hours. The standard also lets Ring temporarily decrypt and process users’ videos to offer cloud-based features like Smart Alerts, which notify users when people, vehicles, or packages appear in a camera’s field of view. “With TAKE, Ring delivers the intelligent features you love and rely on, like Smart Alerts, and then throws away and deletes the encryption key. Only you retain the keys to your video,” the company said in a blog post.

Amazon’s white paper on the standard says it was built on Messaging Layer Security (MLS), an open messaging standard developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force. The company said that with TAKE, a user who loses access to a device and buys a new one can authenticate by standing near their Ring cameras to recover encryption keys, or separately use a passphrase, cloud-based backups, another approved device, or passkeys. TAKE will roll out gradually to customers starting in September and will become the default standard worldwide; users can still manually choose end-to-end encryption instead.

The change comes as Ring has faced criticism over its “Familiar Faces” feature, which uses facial recognition to identify visitors — in June, a class-action lawsuit accused Amazon of storing images of passersby without consent.

Why it matters

By defaulting users into cloud-processed encryption rather than end-to-end, Ring is betting that AI-driven convenience features outweigh the privacy trade-off for most customers — a bet that lands amid active litigation over how the company handles the images its cameras already capture.