If you’ve had a Ring doorbell installed, you might be wondering how you or someone with ill intentions can sneak past the Ring doorbell without it sensing it.
Remember that sneaking to trespass is criminal; therefore, you should only try this at home or use the ideas discussed below to make your Ring doorbell installation immune to sneak techniques.
Here’s how you can bypass the ring doorbell:
Unplug the Model or Router to Take Ring Doorbell Offline
Ring products require a Wi-Fi connection to work. So if your wireless modem or router goes offline, taking down your Wi-Fi, your Ring doorbell will stop immediately.
Therefore, if you have access to the modem or router to which the Ring doorbell is connected, you can unplug it, and the Ring doorbell will go offline. Remember that Wi-Fi connections always drop and disconnect; hence, this action will not be suspicious.
Additionally, the Ring doorbell doesn’t alert users when their doorbells go offline; the owner has to open the Ring app and go to their doorbell to check its current status to establish whether or not it’s offline.
Unless you randomly check the app, you may never know when your Ring doorbell isn’t working.
How to Protect Yourself Against the Bypass
You can protect yourself against this bypass by ensuring your home is secure. For example, you can look at all doors and windows and have an alarm system to prevent anyone from breaking in and gaining access to your router or modem.
You can even hide your router or modem, especially if the perpetrator is one of your kids trying to sneak out.
Block the Ring Doorbell Cam With a Physical Barrier or Cover
Blocking a Ring doorbell cam with a physical cover or barrier might sound too obvious; however, it’s fairly effective.
You can place a piece of tape or even a bag over the Ring doorbell to render it useless. However, you must be close enough to the camera to block or cover it.
You also have to worry about stopping the Ring doorbell from recording motion, which will alert the owner or be seen and recorded.
If you can disguise yourself first and then quickly cover the camera, you’re in luck for a short time. However, if the owner is nearby, they will get an alert and probably check their camera; when they see nothing but black, they will probably get alarmed.
How to Protect Yourself Against the Bypass
If you own a Ring doorbell, ensure that you have motion alerts. To do this, open the Ring app and select your Ring doorbell. Right beside it, you’ll see “Motion alerts” – toggle this ON.
Once you’ve set up the motions alert, whenever someone walks by or in front of your door, you’ll get a notification on your smartphone and quickly assess the situation.
Remember that you should be concerned if the camera loads but it’s completely black.
Use a Wi-Fi Signal Jammer
If you can’t access the router or modem inside the home, you can use a Wi-Fi signal jammer to take down the Wi-Fi and sneak past the Ring doorbell.
Signal jammers deliberately jam, block, or interfere with wireless communications. In this case, you’ll use a jammer that blocks Wi-Fi signals. For example, the Ring doorbell jammer creates “noise” by sending several signals simultaneously in the 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz frequency ranges.
The jammer overwhelms the Wi-Fi signal coming from the Ring doorbell and renders it useless. While the jammers are very effective, they are understandably illegal because they don’t discriminate and can block signals from any device within range.
Marketing and selling jammers in the US is a federal crime; however, there are ways to get around this.
How to Protect Yourself Against the Bypass
Unfortunately, you can do little or nothing to protect yourself against a signal jammer. The best you can do is hope that people will be afraid of violating federal law and won’t buy a signal jammer outside the country.
Disable Features Within the Ring App
Disabling features within the Ring app is the most obvious method of turning off a Ring doorbell without others knowing. However, this method is likely the least useful because you’ll need access to the device with the Ring app that controls the Ring doorbell you’re trying to sneak past.
This method will work well if you have direct access to the device, for example, your parent’s smartphone. But then, you have to open the app and turn off “Motion Detection” or disable specific motion zones of the Ring doorbell.
You can turn off the motion recording unction on your Ring device by doing the following:
- Open the Ring app
- Tap the three lines at the top left-hand corner
- Select Devices.
- Tap the device you want to adjust.
- Turn Motion Detection OFF.
- The OFF position will be white.
- The ON position will be blue.
It’s best to understand that motion alerts and motion detection are different. Therefore, you won’t receive notifications if you only turn off alerts. However, your device’s motion detector will still be turned on, and any motion it detects will be recorded in your device’s History log.
Therefore, ensure that you turn off “motion detection” to ensure that no motion is tracked and alerts are not sent.
Disable Specific “Motion Zones”
You can be less obvious by letting the motion detection stay on but disabling the motion zones on the camera itself. When you do this, everything appears normal, but the camera won’t detect you.
You can disable specific “motion zones” by doing the following:
- Tap the three lines on the top left-hand corner of the Dashboard screen.
- Select Devices.
- Tap the specific device that you want to adjust.
- Select Device Settings.
- Tap Motion Settings to customize your Motion Zones.
- Select the Add a Motion Zone button, and you’ll see a colored box appear.
- Follow the on-screen directions, and drag the points of the colored box to expand or contract the area you want to monitor.
- Once your Motion Zone is in place, and you’re happy with the placement, press Save.
How to Protect Yourself Against the Bypass
If you’re a homeowner or parent, you can easily protect yourself by securing your device. For example, the Ring app is probably on your smartphone; therefore, you can use a passcode on your phone that no one else knows.
You can also take a step further by ensuring that your phone isn’t lying around.
Turn the Power Off to the Ring Doorbell
Turning the power off to the Ring doorbell could be very simple and especially handy if you don’t have access to the Ring app’s credentials.
During installation, a flipping switch for the doorbell is usually installed on a wall inside the house to control the device’s power transmission. You can turn this off to temporarily reduce the power to the doorbell.
Check this too: How to Save Ring Doorbell Videos Without a Subscription
However, if such a switch isn’t installed in your house, you can meddle with the household’s central circuit to break the power off. Turn the circuit switch off, which powers your Ring doorbell.
Each of the approaches above can be effective for tricking a Ring doorbell. Therefore, as a homeowner, it’s best to know each option well so that you can do your best to prevent bypassing your Ring doorbell.