Thread by @Telegraph

🔔Inside the Ring doorbell revolution…

👁️Despite some privacy concerns and a landmark legal case, the popularity of the beady-eyed gadget means it is here to stay.

Thread 🧵👇
telegraph.co.uk/family/life/in…

⏰It’s just before 2am on an April Sunday during last year’s first lockdown, on a suburban road in north London...

A man saunters down the front path of a semi-detached house, hands in the pockets of his denim shorts. Reaching the front door, he bends down to pick up two pretty olive trees in pots, much loved by the homeowner, then scarpers

I know this not from waking up at the crack of dawn, nor CCTV, but the new method of constant watching: a relative’s Ring doorbell.

✍️Jonathan Margolis

👁‍🗨The smart device allows the owner to watch what is happening outside of their front door on camera.

🏘️It has this week become the centre of a £100,000 payout after Dr Mary Fairhurst claimed her next door neighbour’s invaded her privacy

➡️Thought to be the first of its kind in the UK, the judge’s ruling that she had been placed under ‘continuous visual surveillance’ may well set a precedent...

🏠❓But whether it puts a spoke in the smart doorbell’s inexorable advance – an estimated 16 per cent of homes in the US now have one, while Britain is the second biggest market with thousands being fitted every week – seems less certain

🔊Smart doorbells still make a familiar ding-dong sound but they are also connected to the internet and notify an absent homeowner’s mobile phone when a visitor arrives at their door.

They can then see and have a conversation with the visitor.

📸Jamie McCarthy/Getty Image

🏠The homeowner might be elsewhere in the house and unwilling or unable to answer. They might be at work. Or they might be in Zanzibar or the Swiss Alps.

Wherever they are, the delivery man, the meter reader, the Jehovah’s Witness or whoever can be dealt with as necessary

More serious crimes are being solved partly with the help of the growing network of what is, in effect, private CCTV.

The last sighting of Sarah Everard before she was abducted while walking home in south London, was captured on a smart doorbell.

📸Metropolitan Police/PA

⚫️The momentum smart doorbells have built up in their short life, particularly during delivery-fuelled lockdowns, should ensure that they survive a possible legal threat to their existence

🔔Apart from the convenience and security aspects, there is a lighter side to smart doorbells; a whole cultural phenomenon of viral video clips of doorstep encounters.

🔎Read the full report here: telegraph.co.uk/family/life/in…