We have a simple home(1 floor. 1bath. 2rooms) We live in a calm neighborhood, we don’t own extremely expensive things. And he wants a camera inside our home? For what? This camera can also record audio. We have a child together, we work and we come home. Why do we neeed a camera inside? I feel like it’s an invasion of privacy! I love being silly inside our home. I love yelling. I love singing annoyingly when I’m alone. Should I feel disrespected? Should he feel disrespected? He’s bringing out the “what do you have to hide card”.
I am a professional CCTV installer and I would recommend against this.
Consumer grade home tech products are way too easy to hack (there are a few darknet diaries episodes about this but a quick Google will show you plenty of examples)
In the rare occasion that we install cameras indoors, we generally wire their video feed via the intruder alarm which means when the alarm is unset (i.e you’re at home) - the camera is off. Not just ‘not being watched’ but completely powered down and disconnected from everything.
I work in the industry and I wouldn’t have one inside.
It would be interesting to know why he wants one, there may be other solutions for him…
Out of curiosity 'cause I’ve been thinking about this stuff for awhile (I’m going to be living alone soon and am a bit scared about it so was thinking of setting up a motion perimeter with human recognition) - what if it was a closed system with no Bluetooth or WiFi based cameras? All wired into a blackbox running a custom built service manager, no WiFi recievers on it, inside a literal locked box.
Still hackable?
If it has a way of connecting to the internet, then it can be hacked - but the risk with this kind of setup is much lower than with commercially available cameras that you can watch via a smartphone app. If you want to be able to view your feeds remotely, that’s where the risk comes in.
How are you going to view the live feed or recordings? If you are planning any kind of remote viewing, you’re going to need the internet and, boom, it’s now hackable. Easy? Maybe, maybe not. But unless you built the whole system yourself, you’re not going to know if any of that equipment has a security hole, or worse still, deliberately has a back door like many cheap Chinese cameras do.
The main way that these cameras get hacked is that they arrive with well-known admin user/pass combinations and use uPNP to request port forwarding on your router. Search engines crawling the web find your camera so it becomes searchable on Google and Shodan which is when it becomes a problem.
Now someone has access to what is essentially a small linux server, often with well-known exploits, sitting inside your network.
Following some basic security steps ike changing the admin user/pass, disabling uPNP and blocking external traffic to/from your webcam will greatly reduce the risk.
The next risk comes from buying cameras that are designed to use an app as they’ll call home directly to enable you to connect without setting up port forwading or dynamic DNS. These ones are then at risk of your account and/or their home server being hacked and again gaining access to your camera.
I had multiple cameras indoors (nursery, lounge and kitchen) when our son was born as it allowed either of us to drop-in and say hi without having to disturb the other half e.g. when feeding or in the middle of play. These cameras were all standard IP cameras without fancy apps, on the same network as the rest of my devices but specifically blacklisted for external access in the firewall so only accessible via VPN.
Once he started nursery we took the cameras out of the lounge and his bedroom but left the one in the kitchen to keep an eye on the cooker and back door.
I got a couple cheap ones that call home to some Chinese server. I set them up when traveling to watch certain things. I don’t trust em lol
Then it’s a useless system, though what’s it going to do for you?
If you’re concerned about living alone, and want cameras for security, first of all, you should have a comprehensive security system, and it should be professionally monitored, which means that there does need to be outside access .
The monitoring service will attempt to contact you, and then contact police or fire as appropriate.
alarm systems, generally have off, away, and home modes. In home mode indoor cameras should be disabled.