Ashely LeMay is raising awareness about tech security after a haunting experience involving a smart camera in her daughter’s room shook up the family.
The mother from Mississippi revealed that a stranger hacked into the family’s camera, a Ring video monitor, that looked into her 8-year-old’s bedroom and spoke to her daughter through the monitor, telling her to destroy her room.
“I can’t even put into words how violated I feel. It really is like my worst nightmare,” the mother shared with ABC News.
LeMay revealed that she had purchased the Ring camera during a Black Friday sale this year. Just a week later on Dec. 4, she said that a male voice began to talk to her daughter, Alyssa.
In the footage below the man begins to ask the little girl, Alyssa, questions as she stands in her room, alone.
“Who is that?” Alyssa asks. “I’m your best friend,” the voice replies. “I’m Santa Claus.” The voice continues say. “You could do whatever you want right now. You could mess up your room. You could break your TV.”
At the end of the clip, Alyssa yells out for her mother. But LeMay was not home at the time. Thankfully, her husband was home in the garage when the incident happened. When he heard Alyssa cry out, he ran into the room and discovered the camera had been hacked.
Ring is currently investigating the evidence despite no evidence of an unauthorized intrusion or compromise of Ring’s systems or network.