This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
At this point I really don't understand why anyone would put a camera in their home that's connected to a server they don't control.
Laziness. Most people don't want to research everything needed to set up a self hosted camera system. Much easier to pop into Best Buy and grab a Wyze camera that works out of the box.
I wouldn't call it lazy necessarily, everyone just has limited time and energy to invest in stuff and probably had no idea of the risks.
More likely people lack the time.
Besides, expecting a security camera company to provide a decent quality product that doesn't suffer egregiously serious breaches like Wyze has is not unreasonable. Idealistic, maybe; lacking an appropriately enormous degree of cynicism.
How do these people not realize that these cameras let other people to see into their homes?
This has happened SO. Many. Times.
I really wonder how much everyday people care. Years back, people would give out their passwords for chocolate. Most people at this point have had their SSN’s leaked multiple times, all their PII is generally available somewhere, they use unencrypted SMS and email for financial transactions, etc… convenience is worth way more to the average person than having a few pictures of their house leaked. Even if they’re in it. It just doesn’t enter their mind as a problem. Last few people I brought it up to about their wyze or blink cameras just shrugged off the privacy stuff. (Though none of them had them in their homes, just external doorbell/driveway kinda cameras)
Don't forget cost, I'm working on replacing mine, but a 30 dollar camera now being replaced by ones that cost around 100 each is just taking time. The ones I have outdoors I don't really care about, but I'm working hard to replace all the indoor ones. For now all my indoor wyze cameras are on zigbee plugs that cut power when we're home.
Because most people don't understand the meaning nor the implication of the words that you just said.
For me it's one less camera I have to run on my server that is already overwhelmed with the 12 other cameras that watch the outside. I have my wyze cams on sonoff minis that kill power to them unless I have my house set as away. I don't need 247 recording of the inside just give me the option to peek in while away to see if anything is alarming.
I'm sure I'm going to get some shit for this, but here we go! I own a wyzecam that I keep in (but due to lack of necessity will soon be removing from) my daughter's room. We had it there just to check and see if she was asleep in her crib still without walking up the very creaky stairs/hall to her room.
It has pretty garbage resolution, has no sensitive information in frame, is not in a part of the house that anything can be overheard, and literally just shows a blurry image of our daughter's bed.
I guess someone could theoretically sign in and...watch a 3 year old sleep? The worst case scenario I can imagine is someone using the speaker function to scare my kid, which would suck, but I think I can risk it.
lol again, Wyze? This happened last year. Love that they’re downplaying it, “we’ve identified only 14 people that were affected.” They have a privacy issue. A big one.
Man I saw the headline and I'm like, "Oh, this is old news. Why is it on here?" Then I read your comment and realized that this is actually a second breach. What a mess!
...again.
I’m honestly impressed they are still in business. If the first time it happened didn’t kill them, the second time probably won’t either.
Using Wyze is a choice that has trade-offs and it's up to the user to understand what those are.
For example, if you aren't able, or willing, to selfhost an NVR, then accept that these situations may arise and decide which video feeds are ones you're willing to take that risk with.
Video feeds of your backyard, are significantly different then those of your bedroom, or living areas.
I disagree, you can't expect everyone to be technologically literate enough to understand the consequences of everything. And you can't palm it off by saying "well they need to/should". Much like expecting people to understand and read every single EULA that everyone always scrolls down and hits "accept" At some point legislation needs to be drafted yo make it very clear the consequences, or legislate to ensure privacy so companies can't do this.
I’ve got one on the sump pump and crawl space. China is welcome to monitor that and report anything interesting
Exactly. Don't have cheap web cams pointed inside the home, and it'll be fine. Have them outside, watching doors and gates, providing ~~security~~ videos of shadows and wildlife, whatever. They can still be useful tools.
Do you mean that Wyze has a self-hosted NVR option? If so, that'd be awesome for me...
I was referring to those who use Wyze's default cloud storage.
SOME Wyze models are compatible with 3rd party software/firmware to switch to a selfhosting model, but again, it depends on the model and firmware version.
Yes, all my V2s and even a v3 was able to run Frigate on Home Assistant.
This is the exact same error that chatgpt had. Caching error letting you see other users stuff.
What's that they say ... there are three common errors in programming, catching and off by one errors?
The number of affected customers has grown from 14 to 13,000.
Finally back in the growth economy!
Wait…
Internet Of Things - where the "S" in the acronym stands for security...
This is why I always sigh when people get cameras for security. It's only as secure as the weakest link. And if you don't know what the weakest link is, you are boned.
Every single one of my "internet facing" devices is blocked from accessing the internet at the router. If I want to access them they either get added to my HomeAssistant instance or another computer that's only accessible from the outside through my VPN.
All of the convenience with the privacy concerns practically eliminated. It costs $6 a month in hosting for the VPS I set the wireguard server up on.
Every single one of my "internet facing" devices is blocked from accessing the internet at the router.
This would be a lot more common if router software stopped being developed in the fuckin 80's. Unless you get a commercial product they're all so cryptic, and difficult to navigate.
Routing, NAT and firewall are pretty complex things because its the backbone of everything: phones, websites, enterprises, government. It all uses the same tech. And very few networks are the same (the exception being consumer broadband home networks).
The money for development is in the products for enterprise, so they have to have all the tuneables available and seem hugely complex to non-specialist users.
So, there arent really any "easy" router/firewalls that are also flexible.
Ubiquiti & TP-link do Software Defined Network stuff, abstracts away a lot of the complexity. But as soon as you want to do anything complex, you are digging into CLI and might as well use something designed for that.
OpenWRT is apparently pretty good. Ive never used it.
I now use OPNSense. Essentially freeBSD set up as a router/firewall, with a nice webGUI and loads of flexibility.
I feel like this is what you are looking for
I also dable in Mikrotik routers, and im considering moving to their RouterOS... Or even one of their appliances.
openWRT, OPNSense, RouterOS can be installed on your own hardware. So you could use an old desktop, stick a decent network card in it and use that with a bridge modem.
I've got several Wyze cams around my house and one inside facing the main living room/kitchen area. I realize it's an imperfect system with flaws, but at the same time that living room camera is also the reason I was able to file abuse charges against my ex wife. Not a scenario I'd want anyone to deal with, but in my case it turned out to be some of the best money I've ever spent.
You can have security cameras without putting them on the Internet for anyone to access.
To be clear you block internet access at your router. Do not trust the camera not to phone home.
Depending on your router - this is either very difficult, or a single click but I've never seen it be impossible.
They definitely saw Deez nuts
Maybe I want you to peek in...
I am in the process of adding a couple security cameras and have been amazed that the majority of consumer brands essentially claim ownership of their customer's video content. They block access outside of their apps, charge for access and control of that video, and then fail to secure the video content they've claimed. It's another case of buying not equal owning.
Wyse, Eufy, Ring and Next have all had breaches of various kinds. Wyse took three years to fix major vulnerabilities. TP-Link has been sued by the FTC for failing to address router and camera flaws. Ring repeatedly provided video to law enforcement without a warrant. Even Roomba vacuum's video footage has been leaked by the company entrusted with it.
It is clearly much more profitable to ignore breaches and vulnerabilities than to prevent them.
Allowing any video to exit your home network and be stored by a corporation is just asking for trouble.
This is why you don't use any smart home devices, kids
Oh, I use plenty of smart devices. I just make sure I select equipment that I can put on an isolated network without cloud access and operate through my self-hosted automation platform.
If it requires the cloud or a dedicated app for its basic setup and operation, its not getting installed here.
Works great on paper till you find the official API that can be used with open assistant is for licensed technicians only so you can only connect it to your server by giving your server access to the cloud app...
Looking at you Mitsubishi air conditioning unit with infrared scanner that is definitely not an old webcam up-cycled from some random warehouse.
Yeah, that's been a problem lately. Haier also recently issued a takedown against the maintainer who published the Home Assistant integration for their brands of air conditioners and other smart appliances.
Ford, Tesla, and several other smart device makers have similarly taken their seni-open APIs to license-only/closed source only recently.
Which is dumb because even if they DO want to monetize that data stream by selling it to data brokers, the people they've affected by closing those APIs represent a small fraction of their user base. It amounts to a rounding error in the revenues.
