They’re watching you through your camera…

…or, at the very least - they could be.

That was the theme of Dad Ruins Cloud-Connected Cameras, anyway.

I did not anticipate that it would be a successful video. It was mostly meant to be a vote collector for a follow-up video on Frigate. Well, it’s my third most watched video ever (not that I’ve been doing this all that long).

I guess it makes sense that people wanted to find out what was supposedly wrong with this absolutely massive market of products. I think it was a good video, aside from spending a little too much time explaining what the alternative would be. What I was shooting for was demystifying the complexity of the solution (many assume it’s harder than it is), but I inadvertently bored a bunch of people.

Lesson learned - but hey, I’m still on the steep part of the learning curve. This is going to happen some of the time. Or, maybe all of the time. lol

I dropped the following names: Ring, Nest, Arlo, D-Link, Eufy, Philips, Aquara, Xiomi, Wyze, Tapo, Blink, and Amcrest.

The result was getting 124 thumbs down. And I could see each one of them in the comments - all with some variation of: “you were wrong to list my camera brand!”. Except I wasn’t. Even for those that record locally, and don’t have a subscription, basically none of them engaged with me after I pointed out the vulnerability of them using the vendor app to look in on their system when away from home. Yep - if YOU can see your system, the VENDOR CAN, TOO! (ps. the video got over 13k likes)

No need to get mad at me about it. And, to be perfectly clear - I didn’t expect anyone to know that before the video. However, you shouldn’t get mad at me because you were today years old when you found out your cameras weren’t as private as you thought. Some people argued that privacy wasn’t important because of where their cameras were located… or because they already carry around a cell phone.

Oh… ok.

Most interesting comment award goes to Monica…

In other news, a viewer suggested I use Markdown code blocks on my tutorials. I was about to reply that Squarespace doesn’t support that, but then I realized that I should investigate rather than assume. Thirty seconds later, I learned that I could use Markup on Squarespace. As the wise woman said: “You live… you learn”.

Finally - I put out a poll about doing an AMA livestream. 2/3s said they’d watch. Is it a good idea? Who knows. Anyway, I’ll keep working on the Nextcloud video…