Oh look, that thing they said definitely wasn’t happening was happening…

  • In one case, an employee “viewed thousands of video recordings belonging to female users of Ring cameras that surveilled intimate spaces in their homes such as their bathrooms or bedrooms,” the FTC said.

    Of all the places, why the fuck would you install one of these in your bathroom? I just don’t get some people

    • especially cameras inside their houses if you need a security cameras to monitor whats happening outside your house go pay someone to install them this way you control the access instead of trusting a 3rd party with info about when your home or not

    • It’s so crazy to me that people will install spying devices in their homes that X number of random faraway people can access and they will PAY to do it. Even if everything is 100% honorable and well-run initially, most everything changes given enough time.

    •  orclev   ( @orclev@lemmy.ml ) 
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      31 year ago

      Smart devices aren’t so much the issue as internet connected ones. I use a number of ZWave smart devices, but I avoid buying any smart device that connects with wifi. You do need some kind of hub device ultimately but even in that case you can use your own hardware and software for that.

      • Just run your own router and block all the outgoing connections you don’t want. I love my EufyCams, they work great and store video on premises. All I have to do is block the connections it makes to send video previews in push notifications.

  • Mentioned this in another Lemmy community, but a self hosted (preferably FOSS) home security video solution would probably have prevented something like this. Main problem is those solutions aren’t as simple as Ring’s plug and play cameras.

    • I’m running esp32 cameras on zoneminder. They don’t make esp32 compatible cameras without the ir filter but I found one seller that sells them with only a little blop of superglue holding it together. The ir filter is also at the back where it can be carved out with a knife instead of at the front of the lense where it’s 100% impossible to remove. They probably get paid money by smart camera manufactures to not sell ir filter removable cameras.

      The night vision isn’t very good because the maximum exposure the camera can do isnt very high but it’s still a hell of a lot better than the conventional options of either 1)an affordable smartphone app based camera that spies on you or 2) a “proper” rtsp camera that can cost over $700 just for a non wireless non night vision one. I bought a ir led light bar to immuninate the fuck out of it which works well enough.

      Until they start doing a more effective job at cracking down on sellers selling ov2460 cameras that have an easily removable ir filter, this is the best option for now.

  • I need a sign for my security cameras that says something to the effect of “recordings are kept on premises and not made available to anyone outside this house” so my neighbors don’t think I’m a narc.

  • For others here who seem knowledgeable: my parents have a couple of TP-Link wireless cameras that let you see the video in their app. It doesn’t offer any security features like ring though. I don’t know if they’re smart cameras in the sense of ring.

    My previous understanding was that tplink was basically hosting their own servers to provide remote access to the cameras for their customers because it would be make people buy into the ecosystem.

    How much of similar concern exists for something like these?