Amazon-owned smart home appliance maker Ring has won the world record for biggest game of “ding dong ditch” after a software glitch broadcast erroneous doorbell chimes to countless users yesterday.
The global game of Ring and run (as it’s known in the US) coincided with software issues that prevented owners from viewing archived footage or receiving push notifications. Customers in markets including the UK and US were believed to be affected.
The Timely Information Transmission Suffered Unpredictable Ping-time (TITSUP) led some to believe that Ring’s systems were being targeted deliberately by a malicious third party. “Are the Ring doorbells being hacked? Mine are going off non-stop,” tweeted one confused punter.
“You’re [sic] network has been down for hours. Now I am getting phantom ‘rings’ and it’s driving my Great Dane crazy,” complained another.
Your humble hack also experienced the glitch when a random chime from his overpriced doorbell disturbed a post-work nap. More accurately, it startled his dogs, who then leapt onto his chest.
Speaking to El Reg, Ring’s Europe head of communications, Claudia Fellerman, confirmed the problem and said it has since been fixed.
“Our processing infrastructure was running behind which caused some delays in receiving in-app notifications and Chime motion and ding notifications. However, this has been resolved,” she said.
According to Ring’s status page, no user data was lost, and a fix was applied by late evening. The company warned that users may encounter delayed chimes and notifications while the back-end catches up.
Ring also urged punters to check the battery levels on their devices as the outage may have caused a higher-than-usual power drain.
Yay cloud!
Robin Edgar
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