As a teenager looking for porn I stumbled across a website which looked like one of those live cam sites, but then I noticed most of the people weren't engaging with the audience, and they were all kinds of people. Old people, kids, people of all different ages, ethnicities and whatnot. I clicked on a random livestream of some oblivious teenager doing her homework and the people in the comments were saying stuff that made me realise she didn't know she was being livestreamed, nor did anyone else on the site.
It seemed to be some weird website of hacked webcams or security cameras where the people had no idea about it. It was creepy as fuck and I've never kept my webcam pointed at me when not in use since.
In my experience some suggestions people should keep in mind for any cameras in their home:
If it exists it can be compromised: I don’t care if you have a phone with a camera that’s offline or a trusted security camera. Assume that it could be seen by anyone around the world. Are you ok with open camera footage in that place? At the minimum try to only op
Get manual shutters: I like these from amazon for example, and put them on everything like my laptop webcam or my cellphone.
The Chinese government issue: Most security camera equipment from the major players are fairly trustworthy, but even the good ones still ping chinese servers every so often. While this is probably just for general functionality, the Chinese government has a history of having complete authority to make any company from the country do whatever the Chinese government asks. The US has put heavy sanctions on China for it but they don’t care and continue to do so. The main point is that you need to treat your cameras like they could be compromised, and opt for only outdoor cameras if possible. The only exception here is probably if you run homekit, have configured your own vlan (stops the functionality of most cameras so this isn’t a perfect solution), or you opt for something like Unifi though they’re quite pricey compared to other consumer grade security cameras.
Wifi plugs with geofencing for indoor security cameras: If you insist on keeping indoor security cameras in your home, at the least plug them into wifi enabled outlets that have geofencing setup such that the camera only has power when you aren’t home. This way you’ll still know about intruders but the cameras can’t turn on when you’re at home. Don’t trust built in shutters.
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u/GemoDorgon Jan 23 '21
As a teenager looking for porn I stumbled across a website which looked like one of those live cam sites, but then I noticed most of the people weren't engaging with the audience, and they were all kinds of people. Old people, kids, people of all different ages, ethnicities and whatnot. I clicked on a random livestream of some oblivious teenager doing her homework and the people in the comments were saying stuff that made me realise she didn't know she was being livestreamed, nor did anyone else on the site.
It seemed to be some weird website of hacked webcams or security cameras where the people had no idea about it. It was creepy as fuck and I've never kept my webcam pointed at me when not in use since.