• Posts not specific to local events, activities, or topics like
  • Personal interests like favorite recipes, travel destinations, and non-local sports teams
  • Ring device/software related issues
  • Seasonally anticipated weather for the region, unless posted with information specific to your community like damage prevention tactics or safety tips
  • Scripted entertainment, like short-form cell phone videos meant for comedic posts or cross posting from other social media
• Common home security footage misinterpretations related to unexplained lights.
  • Reports of strange floating lights are either light reflecting off a bug/web near the lens, non-visible to the human eye infrared wavelengths being captured, or even satellites passing by overhead .
• Posts or comments criticizing how your neighbors use Community.
  • This is helpful feedback for Ring, not your neighbors. We encourage users to click “See Fewer Posts Like This” on posts they don’t find relevant, flag posts they believe are inappropriate, and
    customize their feed
    to only see the posts that matter to them so we can improve our understanding of what content the community wants.
• Specific content types that users have identified as unhelpful on Community:
  • While we encourage discussions about improving quality of life in your neighborhood, keep the discussion general do not use Community to criticize specific neighbors, their guests or identified members of the community that do not involve damage, injury, or theft in your community like:
    • Local ordinance violations of a specific neighbor like parking issues, noise complaints, fireworks or animal waste issues
    • Verbal disagreements with roommates, tenants, landlords or neighbors
    • HOA violations of a specific individual
    • Individuals taking fruit from a tree
  • Service personnel, like food delivery drivers, carelessly damaging a package through negligent work

• Topics that lead to inevitable frictions like opinions on politics, religion, or highly debated social issues are prohibited. Common religious expressions like sending prayers to your community members are fine.
• Election information or information that may discourage fair and equal access to participate in an election is prohibited
• Community is not a marketplace, please avoid commercial or personal solicitations, including rehoming pets, advertisements, or searching for jobs. Feel free to lean on your community in times of crisis like a natural disaster, or if you are fortunate enough to have time, expertise, or extra items to support your community, let your neighbors know you are there to help. However to prevent individuals exploiting Community, if you are offering to provide goods or services, the context in your post should be clear you have no intention of making a profit off your neighbors in need.

• Do not post other people’s personally identifying information like phone numbers, full names, and exact addresses, or information sufficient the average person to deduce an identity or location of a home.
• Do not upload photos, audio or video of individuals or activities where a reasonable person would expect privacy. For example, someone recorded in a bathroom.
• Do not post content that contains personally identifying information, photos, videos, or audio of a child under the age of 13 without parent/guardian permission.
• Do not post content depicting an identifiable crime victim, bystander, or child who is in distress, seeking assistance, under attack, or in an otherwise vulnerable state or compromising situation, unless it is posted for the purpose of identifying the suspect.
• In certain limited circumstances, personal information about others is permitted in posts and comments. These include but are not limited to publicly available information, situations involving ongoing threats to physical safety, and information posted by local authorities.
• Respect the privacy of others. Content that revolves around the depiction of unknown individuals in potentially insensitive or embarrassing situations are prohibited. We want to laugh with others, not at others.

Hateful content

Racism, hateful language, or discrimination of any kind is prohibited.

• Posts and comments that dehumanize or express inferiority, contempt, exclusion or disgust of someone based on protected attributes like race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, immigration status, sex, gender identity, age, disability, socioeconomic or veteran status are not tolerated on Community. Posts or comments that violate this guideline may result in a temporary or permanent ban.

Prejudice and implicit bias

Racial profiling or prejudice of any kind is prohibited.

• Prejudice of any kind is not allowed on Community, even if it is unintentional. Calling attention to a personal attribute like someone's race, nationality, religion, socioeconomic position, sexual orientation, disability, or immigration status is rarely appropriate, often leads to misunderstandings, and could alienate your neighbors.
• To ensure your posts are met with the attention they deserve, follow these guidelines when mentioning certain protected attributes:
  • Using race to build a helpful identity
    • We realize that it is common on TV and in the media to refer to people by their race and gender when discussing a safety alert or possible crime. However this information alone does not help meaningfully identify someone and can imply that race is part of the reason to be concerned about a person’s actions. If you include an individual’s race in your post to describe identity, you must Include
      two additional physical descriptors

      , such as clothing, tattoos, or mode of transportation. Height, age, and sex are not sufficient, because these physical attributes are too commonplace to be meaningful.
  • Assumption of criminal capacity or criminal intent based on someone's perceived social or economic level is prohibited.
  • Do not assume or mention an individual’s ethnicity, nationality, orientation, disability, or immigration status. Stick to the facts, provide as many details as possible and do not direct insults or opinions toward the individual.

Unneighborly and inappropriate

• Personal attacks, insults, and demeaning or sexualized language are prohibited.
  • Do not bully, harass, promote or attack personal ideologies.
    While we encourage open communication among neighbors and understand that occasional disagreements may occur, always remember to be respectful and neighborly— these are real people from the community you live in.
  • Do not use profanity, crude, or sexual language including abbreviations, character replacement, acronyms, innuendos and euphemisms. Censored words are permitted if the words are essential context to understand a safety incident.
  • Do not victim blame or make jokes at the expense of victims or others users.

Promoting or normalizing violence or self-harm

• Content that promotes, normalizes, glorifies or otherwise fosters violence and potentially dangerous situations is prohibited. Do not promote or encourage violence, vigilantism, or self harm. This includes encouraging people to confront suspects, use force against others, advocating for the use of weapons, or other dangerous behavior.
  • Promotion of violence

    means suggesting that violence or proactive engagement in a dangerous situation is a good solution for protection or justice. For example:
    • Wishing or expressing a desire for physical harm or claiming physical harm is an acceptable form of justice;
    • Wishing for current or future violence against or physical confrontation of individuals
  • Normalizing violence

    means advocating for or posting videos or images of yourself in avoidably dangerous situations. For example:
    • Suggesting that confrontation is a good form of preventing crime or harm;
    • Posts or comments about leaving your personal property to chase and confront an individual;
    • Posts or comments that showcase you holding a weapon in a non-self defense scenario
  • Glorifying violence

    means celebrating or praising violence as well as violent content meant to entertain or shock. For example:
    • Fantasizing about how you will make it dangerous for individuals;
    • Relishing a missed opportunity to confront an individual or use violence

Graphic content

• Disturbing content such as nudity, sexual behavior, and graphic violence are prohibited.
  • Do not post videos and images of death/dying, visibly open wounds, and sexual assault caught on camera. Although it is sometimes hard to avoid graphic imagery when documenting a safety issue, you should weigh the practical benefits of a given video or image against the possibility the imagery may cause someone distress.
  • Do not post videos and images of incidental nudity, pornography, sexually suggestive or other graphic content with the intent to arouse

Misleading information, fraud, and impersonation

• Fraudulent activity such as intentionally untrue statements about an individual, misrepresenting who an incident occurred to, and impersonation of anyone else, including Ring, other neighbors or a celebrity, are prohibited.
• Misleading information that leads to harm is prohibited.
  • Any content that may lead to or has the potential to lead to significant risk or harm to individuals, families, or communities.

Spam and trolling

Trolling and spamming are prohibited. Posts or comments that we determine to be spam or trolling may result in a temporary or permanent ban.

• Multiple posts on the same topic are not necessarily spam. When we investigate reports of spamming from the community we consider various aspects like quality, frequency, targeted audience, and context provided in the reports we receive to establish if a user is spamming. If we believe a user is spamming, we may warn the account owner via email and in extreme cases we may suspend or permanently ban an account. We may also remove some of the account’s recent posts from the feed so others in the area feel they have the opportunity to participate.

Illegal content

Child Sexual Abuse Material, terrorism and extremism content will result in a permanent ban. Violent threats, copyrighted or trademarked content, or any other kind of illegal content is prohibited. Facilitating the illegal acquisition or misuse of regulated or illegal goods or services is prohibited.

Additionally, to reduce the chances of misunderstandings, implicit bias, and profiling, we identify areas where these are more likely to manifest and implement the following tenets when developing our policies:

• Community always creates guidelines and evaluates content based on the objective actions of a reported individual, never on speculation about the reported individual’s intent or a poster’s level of concern.
  • E.g. Someone walking towards the front door and quickly turning around is a fact. However posts about this conduct do not meet the standards for an allowed post under our Community Guidelines. Even if the poster believes this conduct was due to the individual seeing the poster’ home security camera and trying to avoid detection, this is not a fact, it is a guess.
• Community’s Guidelines prohibit posts about certain conduct or physical actions that present a high risk of identifying harmless behavior as concerning, even if descriptions of the conduct or physical actions are indeed accurate.
  • E.g. Posts that report an individual has opened a screen door are not permitted
    • It is common for individuals to bypass a screen/security door to knock on the main door
  • E.g. Posts that report someone walking to the driver side window of a car and making a transaction are not permitted
    • There are plenty of legal transactions involving two parties that do not involve illicit drugs.

• Crimes committed
  • Damage (e.g. caused from hit and runs, pranks, targeted attacks)
  • Theft (e.g. packages, mail, and other personal property)
  • Threats to life or injury, including both physical and verbal altercations
• Unauthorized handling of personal property
  • Physically touching personal property that is inappropriate for strangers to touch
    • Use of force or tools to open or dislodge property or attempt to do so
    • Touching, moving, opening personal property like packages, car doors, bikes, equipment, windows, or main house doors without permission
• Trespassing
  • Trespassing can include a lot of different behaviors. However on Community, one of the following 2 attributes must be present in posts about trespassing:
    • Individual(s) are on the property late at night or early in morning, meaning between 10 p.m. - 7 a.m.
    • Individual(s) are on an unusual location of the property
      • Unusual location

        means: any deviation from the path between where someone accesses a property and the front door or other place where guests are typically received.
        • E.g. A person who walks across the lawn from the street in front of the house toward the front door is not in an unusual location.
        • E.g. A person who walks from a front gate, leaves the walkway to a front door, and goes to the side of a house with no door is in an unusual location.
  • Based on feedback from users and consulting with independent experts, the following behaviors are not considered Trespassing on Community:
    • Individual in public or shared spaces like apartment common areas
    • Pranks that do not cause damage, like ding dong ditching
    • Individual taking shortcuts through an unfenced front yard
    • Individual looking through, leaving, or taking trash
    • Individual hiding from someone or something
• Holding a visible weapon
• Specific examples of predator-like behavior (indecent exposure, taking pictures of people without their knowledge, talking to children from cars, stalking, or other similar behavior.)

Posts may be removed if important information is missing for your neighbors to understand the incident. When this happens, you can resubmit your post with more information.

• Include key details like what happened, where and when it occurred, how you became aware of it, and whether it has been resolved or is ongoing.
• When describing individuals, build strong identifies by providing unique details like clothing. Avoid relying on vague physical characteristics that are shared by many people, such as race or height.
• When posting about dangerous events you witnessed, your community will expect you to have more information given your proximity to the events unfolding. Include enough detail like how the event transpired, who is affected, and whether law enforcement is aware allows your community to discuss and reach their own conclusions regarding the event’s urgency and level of threat.
• Reduce the clutter in your local Community feed by including all information regarding an incident to one post.

• Always make it clear why you are posting. It may be clear to you it’s a funny video of your spouse, but not to others. Additionally, be sure to select the correct type of post that matches your intent. Your neighbors have customized their feed based on the types of notifications they want to receive and hitting your intended audience is important.
• Avoid topics that users consider distractions or not helpful and relevant for community wide discussions.
• Ensure the correct media is uploaded with your post.

• Acts of kindness from a stranger
• Heartfelt moments of family and friends
• Cute critters
• Service workers going above and beyond
• Captivating nature
• Festivities and lighthearted oddities

• Get local insights or advice from those around you
• Organize events like charity drives, craft markets, or block parties
• Meet individuals who influence and impact your community like public safety agencies and community organizers
• Return items you found like keys, wallets, and misdelivered packages
• Offer support in any way you can during times of need
• Discover local opportunities like free swim lessons, health screenings, or hazardous waste disposal
• Coordinate around to local disasters
• Share appreciation or encourage efforts to make your community a better place to live

• Enlist your communities help in finding your pet
• Help reunite your neighbors missing pets
• Scan local shelters for possible pet matches when you enable Petco’s Love Lost when posting
• Discuss missing animal prevention tips
• Discover community pet resources like free vaccination and microchipping events

• Wild animal sightings
• Utility Outages
• Reckless drivers
• Natural Disasters and uncommon severe weather
• Gunshots or explosions
• Police, fire and ambulance activity
• Road closures, road hazards and traffic accidents
• Hazmat issues like chemical spills or found drug paraphernalia
• School lockdowns
• Local hate/prejudice incidents
• Public information on local registered sex offenders
• Missing People

  and silver alerts

• Crimes committed
  • Damage (e.g. caused from hit and runs, pranks, targeted attacks)
  • Theft (e.g. packages, mail, and other personal property)
  • Threats to life or injury, including both physical and verbal altercations
• Unauthorized handling of personal property
  • Physically touching personal property that is inappropriate for strangers to touch
    • Use of force or tools to open or dislodge property or attempt to do so
    • Touching, moving, opening personal property like packages, car doors, bikes, equipment, windows, or main house doors without permission
• Trespassing
  • Trespassing can include a lot of different behaviors. However on Community, one of the following 2 attributes must be present in posts about trespassing:
    • Individual(s) are on the property late at night or early in morning, meaning between 10 p.m. - 7 a.m.
    • Individual(s) are on an unusual location of the property
      • Unusual location

        means: any deviation from the path between where someone accesses a property and the front door or other place where guests are typically received.
        • E.g. A person who walks across the lawn from the street in front of the house toward the front door is not in an unusual location.
        • E.g. A person who walks from a front gate, leaves the walkway to a front door, and goes to the side of a house with no door is in an unusual location.
  • Based on feedback from users and consulting with independent experts, the following behaviors are not considered Trespassing on Community:
    • Individual in public or shared spaces like apartment common areas
    • Pranks that do not cause damage, like ding dong ditching
    • Individual taking shortcuts through an unfenced front yard
    • Individual looking through, leaving, or taking trash
    • Individual hiding from someone or something
• Holding a visible weapon
• Specific examples of predator-like behavior

  (indecent exposure, taking pictures of people without their knowledge, talking to children from cars, stalking, or other similar behavior.)