Picture yourself relaxing on your couch with your family on a Friday night while watching the newest trash on Netflix. You’re blissfully unaware of the fact that someone gained access to that camera on your bookshelf and is spying on you, gathering who knows what from a computer far away.
That is a creepy and otherwise very unusual situation, but in my opinion, it shouldn’t exist at all. Keeping indoor cameras in your home is just a bad idea waiting to happen. It’s one thing to have indoor cameras for workplace safety or for security reasons at a corner store.
You’ll see that this scenario isn’t quite as unlikely as you think if you consider recent security issues at Eufy(opens in new tab), past Wyze camera flaws(opens in new tab), or the time we learned Ring employees were spying on customers(opens in new tab) through their in-home cameras.
Limited use-case scenarios
Having said that, there are a few minor situations in which an indoor camera is a good choice. As long as you have a strong password on your account and have two-factor authentication turned on, using the best indoor cameras(opens in new tab) is usually safe.
In my situation, I have a Ring PTZ Camera (shown above) that I temporarily install whenever I go on vacation. Because it has a perfect view of all of my home’s entrances, I usually place it in the middle of the dining room table. The benefits, essentially, of living in a small home with a single combined great room.
Not only is this camera a temporary one — I completely unplug it and stick it in a box in the basement when we’re not on vacation — but it also does a wonderful job of announcing its presence to anyone that enters the house. Upon any sort of motion detection, it loudly audibly speaks “Hello! You are now being recorded.”
It’s also nice that it’s a PTZ Cam that can cover multiple viewpoints at the touch of a virtual button while you’re not home.
In addition, I’m aware that many people use these cameras as baby monitors. Given that this exact scenario caused one of the most horrendously creepy Ring scandals(opens in new tab) in existence, I would say it’s also not a good idea. Instead of buying an internet-connected smart camera, buy a simple CCTV one, instead.
That ensures you can still see and hear your child when in the home and that no one can ever somehow get ahold of this footage unless they’re standing outside your home with special equipment to tap into the encoded video feed. That is a very challenging task to complete, if you have any tech knowledge.
A baby monitor that is connected to the internet is equally vulnerable to crooks as any other internet-connected camera. Simply put, it doesn’t bear the well-known baby brand name.
Whether Eufy is cleared of wrongdoing in this scandal or not, the fact remains that you should never install internet-connected cameras in your home round-the-clock. Whether the issue is the result of malicious behavior or human error—which, at this point, is what I believe is happening with the entire Eufy debacle—the outcome is still the same.
When you are at home, internet-connected cameras should only be temporarily installed there and unplugged. There is simply no justification for letting that kind of privacy-destroying can of worms into your life.
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Source: Android Central
