Who’s Watching Your Porch?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Yes Ring allows anybody to transfer the device to their account once they steal it. No confirmation email to original account owner.
Even worse, this clears all of the video from the original account holder SO YOU CAN’T SEE WHO STOLE IT!!!
The whole point of owning a security camera is gone. No footage.
Its just a fundamentally poor product. And given all the other poor privacy measures - I’ll never buy one again.
Actually, the dumbest flaw ever would be to give all the previous footage to the new "owner".
This is so sad, I hope it winds up being magnified by media outlets. Otherwise it will never be fixed. Your footage shouldnt be reliant on you having your camera still. Tells you they match videos to cameras and can't filter them out between owners.
Looks like they will offer you a replacement, as long as you report to the police: "You will need the police report in order for Ring to provide you with a free replacement device."
Although open source NVR packages are, in my experience, a massive disaster (either extremely outdated and frustrating to set up and use in the case of ZoneMinder, or extremely feature limited as in the case of the fifty Raspberry Pi-based solutions), commercial software packages like Blue Iris and Xeoma (which is even cross-platform) are inexpensive and have expansive feature sets. I use Blue Iris, which has the downside of requiring Windows, but the upside of generating MQTT messages or HTTP requests on alerts which makes for a lot of easy integration. Xeoma is cross-platform but relatively immature (although I've found the vendor to be extremely responsive to emails) and has a bizarro-land UI that's very tricky to learn to use.
On the other hand, consumers don't necessarily need to deal with any of this, because lots of vendors sell NVR appliances that are hardware and software in one product, and they're pretty cheap. Costco even regularly carries them from a couple of major manufacturers. I prefer to do things myself, but I've used appliance NVRs from Swann in a couple of cases and they work fine with extremely easy setup. More recently Ubiquiti has gotten into this space, and I haven't had the opportunity to try their system yet but their products tend to be pretty good quality and ease of use for the rock-bottom prices - and as I understand it their premises-based NVR also runs the UniFi manager, so it makes it really easy to build out a large-campus WiFi-based solution but might also be a neat trick for home use if you want to use the great-for-the-price Ubiquiti APs and/or USG.
At the end of the day, I'm not convinced that cloud-based surveillance solutions really offer much to consumers beyond being backed by vendors with very aggressive marketing. Most people know about Ring cameras but don't know that they can buy a completely non-cloud, on-prem solution-in-a-box at the big box store or even, well, from Amazon. And at the end of the day, the manufacturers of these on-premises systems don't get to loop you into a "social network of fear" and analyze your video, so their opportunities to monetize are a lot more limited, and so they charge higher up-front prices.
I think a lot of it is just awareness though - Amazon and their competition are pushing their cloud-based solutions very hard, while the on-prem surveillance vendors that have for the most part been around much longer just don't really advertise to the consumer market.
When it comes to NVRs, there's a million options and I couldn't produce reviews on all of them... but Blue Iris is probably the most popular commercial NVR and ZoneMinder and Shinobi the most popular open-source. I would describe ZoneMinder as hopelessly obsolete and Shinobi as unstable and hard to get running on other than their supported platforms, but Blue Iris is Windows only so everything has its problems.
The only "big" NVR solution I've worked with is Milestone, and I'd say it's very good and actually not that expensive, but it is pretty heavy to deploy (e.g. needs MS SQL Server) and you have to buy through a VAR which is kind of a huge hassle to go through for a license that is only around $100 (for the lowest-end package).
Also, if you run cheap no-brand Chinese made IP cameras like I do... the cameras are often pretty damn good very a very low price, but sometimes it's a real adventure figuring out how to configure them (e.g. firmware not completely translated to English, often shared between many models so half of the settings don't apply to your device) and I recommend blocking them off from the internet because some have management/cloud recording features that you can't disable and it's a little sketchy having them connect out to some white-box overseas cloud management solution all the time.
It's a best practice to put IP cameras on their own VLAN anyway and it's not really that expensive to get home equipment that can support this, e.g. Ubiquiti's routers/switches and/or the TP-Link "Easy Smart" switches (which are 'semi-managed' and handle VLANs and QoS for well below the cost of a managed switch). But the machine I run Blue Iris on right now just happens to be a weird x86 single-board machine with 2 GbE interfaces, so I have the cameras on a physically segmented network just because it was easy.
I recently set up UniFi Protect (their NVR software), a CloudKey 2+, a set of cameras, and a small UniFi SDN at a vacation home. I can confirm it's extremely simple to install and configure (at least for the audience reading comments on Hacker News; maybe not so much for laypeople). With the USG, you can fairly easily set up a site-to-site VPN to your other personal networks and, assuming you have the bandwidth, watch the video streams real-time from back home or elsewhere.
The downside of the UniFi Protect model is that once adopted/managed by Protect, the cameras are not readily available for streaming to other NVRs, at least as far as I can tell. So if you wanted to integrate the UniFi cameras into a different NVR (e.g., to centralize multiple sites' cameras), it could get challenging if you also have Protect involved.
I saw another self install windows software a few months ago that does machine learning to find people and reduce false positives, but I can't find it now. Have you tried any that do this?
I've seen at least one company that actually sells a BlueIris plugin that implements some kind of ML human detection as a way to filter alerts, but I haven't given it a try.
Xeoma has some "AI" features like this if you pay for the higher-tier license, but tbh I've found Xeoma's base motion detection engine to be so unreliable that I just wouldn't recommend it for this application - but to be fair it was also a while back that I was using it and they may have improved things since then.
I'm much more likely to have a catastrophic equipment failure than a break in. Porch pirates my most likely theft problem and a camera likely won't help much with that.
Unfortunately, contrary to their wifi gear, Ubiquiti's cameras are very expensive for what they are - I had some cheap Hikvision cameras that were already a few years old and the image quality was way higher than the G3 Bullet cameras (Hikvision had sharper optics, better dynamic range, better H.264 encode, higher bitrate options, better motion detection). Hopefully some of this will change with Ubiquiti's new G4 Bullet cameras when they're released.
The Protect system is also not particularly reliable (I've had occasions where a firmware update to the Protect server has taken out all access via the web UI, the web interface is very prone to totally breaking in a browser even when on the same network - streams stopping, or downloads of clips failing, no API and they use a proprietary and undocumented .ubv container format on disk, so you can't grab the media over SFTP)
Ubiquiti needs to step up the quality of the hardware. I realize they're appliances but even powerful embedded processors are cheap. There's no excuse.
Ring, and CCTV in general doesn't prevent or even deter crimes nor did it save anyone. The irony with how useless a Ring camera is, is illustrated in all those Amazon package thefts ring captures but didn't stop. The only useful thing is being able to prove to Amazon your package was stolen. A pointless system of waste for lazy people. Boon for the surveillance state.
But obviously it's a new revenue stream with myriad additional business opportunities for Amazon to capitalize on the paranoia of its customers WRT having their packages stolen, to sell surveillance products to them (and access to law enforcement, ad/marketing interests, etc.).
I had several packages delivered which were "signed" for by someone named "through the letterbox". Similarly, one package said dropped off at the door/porch but no sign of it so I asked for a refund as I assumed it's been stolen... 2 days later my neighbour gives it to me because it was actually delivered to them, but the delivery person couldn't select the proper option to let me know so I had no idea.
Some premeditated crimes (e.g. first-degree murder, bribery) can be deterred by threat of punishment, but when people are making the snap-decision to commit a crime of opportunity, they aren't carefully weighing the risk vs reward.
It still has death sentences and the dubious record of an incarceration rate higher than any other country.
If your point is that people (at least those who aren't scientists or statisticians) round small probabilities to zero, then I agree, and it's something that I think people need to be more aware of when considering deterrence or other behavior. However, I don't think you or the article made this point clearly. The article would be so much shorter and simpler if it was condensed down to that one observation.
It's quite reasonable to say that punishment only has an effect when it is clearly linked to an action, but that sounds like a completely different message than saying punishment doesn't work (implicitly assuming it almost never occurs).
There's a particular rock in the Atlantic off the coast of Europe and East or Ireland that's been carpet bombed with CCTV cameras. Ask anyone who lives there and they'll tell you that they're still waiting for the reduction of petty crime the cameras were supposed to bring. There always seems to be plenty of money to fund more cameras and more surveillance but never any money to fund the Good Old Fashioned Police Work(TM) needed to follow up on all the crime those cameras see.
Again, it's a tool in the tool box, necessary but perhaps not sufficient.
1. It tells me who is at the door when I'm home and lets me see their face. If it's a good friend I can just tell them to let themselves in, if it's a marketer I can ignore it, etc. This is somewhat just convenience compared to a peephole.
2. It tells me who is at the door when I'm not home. I can let me friends know to come back, if it's a neighbor I can let them know I'll catch up with them later, etc.
3. It lets me keep an eye on packages when I'm traveling. I can ask whoever is house sitting to swing by if there's a buildup of them (which in turn hides that I'm away).
4. It lets me confirm that my pet sitter is indeed swinging by. Sure they could text me every time, but it's easy for people to forget that and it's a hassle for the sitter.
5. When things go wrong, it helps me identify the culprits and circulate those pictures. That may not do much in all circumstances, but at the very least it lets me pass on useful information to my neighbors.
And if your goal is to actually prevent theft, you wouldn't even need to turn it on. It's the same issue as home security systems: they run all those goofy ads about a crook sitting in your bathtub because there's almost no real use-case. As a deterrent, an ADT sticker provides all the benefits of a security system for about $2. As a reaction, all it does is tell you that someone has stole your electronics and jewelry. It won't get recovered, the crook won't get ID'd if they wore a mask, probably won't get caught even if they didn't, you'll just be notified a bit sooner.
I'm not going to condemn people for getting these products, but only because I think they've been badly and systematically mislead. Products like Ring are sold on the back of an entire narrative of crime, deterrence, and punishment that has essentially no bearing on reality. Crimes against person and property are one of very few issues where I've seen people completely change their position just by seeing accurate data.
Get one of those outdoors camera covers, and fix somewhere people can easily see. Don't bother with an actual camera.
There is a simple test for when a camera is useful: if you saw something happening on the camera, will you do anything differently? A camera that watches some hidden corner near your front door that lets you decide not to go in there right now can be useful (but then, getting rid of the corner is much better).
Most of what I've seen in the field is either HID iClass (no idea how secure they are) or Mifare Classic. The latter doesn't even attempt to use the card's crypto features (which are broken, but it would've at least been an attempt) and just uses the UID of the card which is broadcast in the clear and even the card's datasheet explicitly warns against using it for any kind of security.
So people probably don't worry about cost-effectiveness of their home security system, they just want to feel safe in their home.
Of course, there are security benefits if you have a cleaner/dog walker/whatever and want to give them access you can revoke without the cost of changing your lock. Or if you're running a commercial installation like an office or AirBnB.
Still, I don't think electronic door locks will become mass-market until someone makes one so reliable it doesn't need a mechanical bypass key, which might be impossible.
Of course, the best bang for your buck is still the simple stuff - a few motion detecting lights, some security company stickers and a clean, well-kept yard.
I’ve seen hotels and student dorm rooms using insecure systems (the latter of which I exploited as a teenager to make a second keycard to sneak into my GF’s room without having to borrow her only key. How easy the attack was worried me quite a bit).
https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-97-porch-pirate-p...
your options are 1) schedule package deliveries to days someone is home 2) schedule deliveries to drop box locations that some services support (amazon locker for example, ups store) 3) ship to someone trusted in the neighborhood 4) ship to work if allowed 5) fake camera, signage, combination thereof 6) buy locally
These cameras are our new city walls and guards, and given a continuation the trend toward greater inequality, these sorts of technologies will become even more ubiquitous.
Despite the physical nature of it, it's an almost white collar crime.
But of course the whole thing about anecdotes and data applies so this may not be the norm. I'd be interested to see data on these sorts of thefts.
And I think the main reason the wealthy build the walls is because they're the only ones who can afford to. Everyone's safety is improved by hiding behind some good walls.
Fine, add burglary to the list. The how matters less than the why. Addressing the why makes us consider how the structure of society incentivizes the crime. Camera systems are also going up in public spaces to deter robberies.
I have seen so many deals on Ring security system and not surprised my entire community is on Ring (since its closer to a Costco) and we are the only household without any kind of security system atm.
However Google keeps removing features and neutering functionality as they painfully absorb Nest into their Google home crap.
For once I'd like one of these vendors that isn't incompetent or evil and actually brings some value to the table :(
Let the games begin!