The Hidden Downsides of Doorbell Cameras

[Jonn]

The Hidden Downsides of Doorbell Cameras—and What to Do About Them​

With many neighborhoods dealing with an uptick in thefts from cars and homes, doorbell cameras can help police catch criminals in action. Sounds great, right? But there's a catch: Companies could share the data and footage gathered from your camera with law enforcement without your permission.


Take Amazon's Ring camera, for example. The company has partnered with more than 400 police forces in the United States and allowed them to access footage from users' Ring doorbells, which is stored in the company's cloud service—in some cases without users' full consent.


And unfortunately, Amazon is not the only manufacturer that allows police to gain access to user materials. According to Consumer Reports, doorbell camera companies like Google, D-Link, SimpliSafe and TP-Link all have policies for sharing camera and doorbell video footage with law enforcement without a warrant or user permission.
What to do: To ensure your data remains private, review the privacy policies and terms of service from your camera's manufacturer, keeping an eye out for clear policies on data sharing that ensure you have control over when and with whom your data is shared. Some cameras even offer features that allow you to limit or disable data sharing entirely.

MSN

 

[DeFunkCat]

I have a brand of camera and security system which is stand alone. It’s not connected to any security company. All info is on my own data storage. The other systems? Yeah they creep me out.

 

[Jonn]

I have the same.

 

[thejuice]

Creepy corpos being creepy

 

[Judge]

Ironically I'd be more concerned about third-parties gaining access to such video data more than law enforcement.

Such as those Home Owners Associations who police property owners as if they were criminals. Or insurance companies who will use any form of evidence contractually allowable to enforce decisions like cancellation, non-renewal or a sizable increase in rates.

Though in general, I prefer to simply to avoid much of anything that is dependent on cloud-based data storage of their customers. Certainly most anyone with any concern of conducting nefarious pursuits on their own property likely are doing the same anyways. I know I would...lol.

Then again, there is another form of technology that can potentially be quite invasive as well. The public and private use of drones. Apart from hacking in general...such is life in the 21st century. When the bad guys likely make the most of new technology before the public at large.