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My brother and father in law bought a bunch cheap WiFi security cameras off of amazon. People online were complaining they phone home all kinds of stuff to Chin
by wil421 7y ago
My brother and father in law bought a bunch cheap WiFi security cameras off of amazon. People online were complaining they phone home all kinds of stuff to Chinese IPs. My father in laws other cameras are Nest which phone to Google but it’s a selling point.
I was going to put the Chinese cameras on a subnet but I don’t want to complicate his network. My father in law has 3 routers with 3 WiFi networks competing with each other; office, living room and outside but that’s a story for another day...at least I got him to replace it with a UniFi AP.
I like UniFi protect because all the data stays at my house and their cameras are strictly no subscriptions.
- blacksmith_tb 7y agoI have three Wyze cams, which pretty much fit the bill of "cheap WiFi security cams which phone home to Chinese IPs". Though you can flash them with other firmware, if you want to control that. Personally, being in the US, I am less worried about Chinese companies sharing my data with US corps or government agencies (that doesn't seem too likely, somehow) but I would certainly be more nervous if I lived in the PRC. I suppose there's still the possibility they could be compromised to try attack other machines on my network, but those aren't wide open.
- jandrese 7y agoMaybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to blackhole those IP ranges on your router? Maybe you're not afraid of the PRC company directly, but who says they aren't going to try to make a buck selling your data to whomever asks?
- blacksmith_tb 7y agoNot a bad idea (unless you flash your own firmware, since then you'd want to be able to rtsp to them), though I am still fairly skeptical the cams could intercept much on the network that wasn't encrypted, and that their tiny SOCs have the horsepower to do much of that...