Why would you expose such a camera to the web?
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
91 points (100.0% liked)
Privacy
4234 readers
139 users here now
Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.
Rules
PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!
- Be civil and no prejudice
- Don't promote big-tech software
- No apathy and defeatism for privacy (i.e. "They already have my data, why bother?")
- No reposting of news that was already posted
- No crypto, blockchain, NFTs
- No Xitter links (if absolutely necessary, use xcancel)
Related communities:
Some of these are only vaguely related, but great communities.
- !opensource@programming.dev
- !selfhosting@slrpnk.net / !selfhosted@lemmy.world
- !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !drm@lemmy.dbzer0.com
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
With a upnp router, you don't have to manually open any ports; it can be done automatically by the camera or app. Meaning that just by adding certain cameras to your internal network, they're automatically open to the Internet.
What kind of idiot would network them on a web connected router?!
The kind that want an app to see what's going on in their home?
If I want to feel good my first thought isn't 'dilotted!'.
The average consumer.
The ability to monitor those spaces remotely is pretty valuable, and to back your security footage up onto an off-site device so it can't simply be stolen during a break in or similar.
This may be true for industry and rich assholes, but I doubt it is necessary for the average home camera? I mean why expose a camera to the web, that covers a scene where you would get naked?
The opposite is true - the average person cannot afford to have a person onsite watching the cameras, so unless they can view them remotely, there's pretty much no point to having them. If they're not exposed to the web, what reason would someone have to install them in the first place?
So they're just exhibitionists?
It's a nice feature to have but risky. I know a few people with security cameras accessible through internet, I'm sure any of them not only don't have the knowledge to detect if someone else have access to their cameras but the possibility haven't crossed their minds.
I definitely lack those abilities so I would air gap the hell out of the entire system.
What about an indicator that shows when someone is using the camera?(but in Hardware so it can't be hacked). And maybe add a controll panel somewhere so you can disable them as soon as you come home.
I think most people who have security cameras want them recording, because you don't know when you'll need it. Having a camera that records when you know it needs to be means you already know there's something going on, which is often the opposite case for a security camera which is to notify you when something you don't know it's happening happens, or at least something you don't expect.
That having been said, I don't have one because I'm not nuts, and if I did I'd at least cover it before changing in front of it, but whatever I guess!
;)
It doesn't always need to be automatically set.
Back when the very first chinese IP cameras started arriving in the west in the noughties, after we'd only had the first gen very expensive professional ones from the like of Axis, they nearly all shared the same firmware. This had factory set credentials of admin / admin and a common port (8080, iirc)
Back then, uPnP was commonly also enabled by default on routers, so the camera would ask for the port to be opened automatically and the router would just do it, allowing the internet into the camera. A simple scan of IPs on port 8080 would yield a lot of prompts with the distinctive login page for this firmware and around 90% of the time, the default credentials would still let you in, and you could see the camera.
Fortunately, routers have improved and uPnP was recognised as being incredibly stupid and isn't seen much now and is disabled by default if it is. Some IP cameras have improved also, but there's still a lot at the lower end that have almost no security, or prioritise convenience or cloud solutions first.
(I researched the above when I found one of my company's cameras broadcasting and tried to educate people about it back in the day, but I doubt it did much good)
Because you don't know much about cybersecurity.