People are disgusted after a camera glitch lets strangers peek into 13,000 homes
A POPULAR home security technology company, Wyze, has suffered a camera breach that exposed users' images to thousands of strangers.
A few days ago, Wyze sent an email to customers revealing that a recent outage “affecting 14 users” actually affected approximately 13,000 people.
That is 930 times more people than initially thought on Friday (February 16).
“The outage came from our partner AWS (Amazon Web Services) and shut down Wyze devices for several hours early Friday morning,” said the email, which was also posted on the website. helpforum.
“If you tried to watch live cameras or events in those days, you probably couldn't.
“We are deeply sorry for the frustration and confusion this has caused.”
The breach occurred when Wyze attempted to bring its devices back online after an outage, which the company attributed to AWS.
“This customer library experienced unprecedented load conditions caused by devices coming back online all at once,” the company added.
“As a result of increased demand, it mixed up the assignment of device IDs and user IDs and associated certain data with incorrect accounts.”
Of all the user images shared among users, Wyze admits that 1,504 people tapped to enlarge the thumbnail and watched the video.
Some even took screenshots of the images they saw on other people's properties, and other people's.
All affected users have been notified of the security breach.
But users are not happy with the way Wyze is trying to shift the blame and want to delete their accounts.
“I really don't like it when a company tries to blame a 'third party' for a mistake,” says one Redditor commented.
“Dear Wyze, Whether the error comes from AWS or another third party, from a consumer perspective YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR MANAGING YOUR SELLERS.”
Another Reddit user, who was affected by the breach wrote: “I am so disgusted and angry.
“I already deleted my account but I feel so violated.”
Wyze has used the incident as an opportunity to strengthen its security controls.
“To ensure this doesn't happen again, we've added a new layer of authentication before connecting users to event videos,” the company explained in its apology email.
“We have also modified our system to bypass caching for user-device relationship checks until we identify new client libraries that have been thoroughly tested against extreme events like we experienced on Friday.”
The trade-off between security and privacy
Analysis by Millie Turner, Technology and Science Reporter at The Sun.
With today's WiFi and app-supported gadgets, home security comes at the expense of privacy.
Companies like Wyze and Amazon-owned Ring talk about privacy, but often don't.
A similar 'disturbing' issue was also discovered on Wyze in September last year, when a user claimed to have seen a couple stark naked in their home.
While Ring has managed to stave off the outcry over image sharing with police (which is now limited), while Amazon swallowed tens of millions in privacy fines for the company's activities.
Such behavior has led privacy campaigners to increasingly scrutinize easy-to-use security gadgets with difficult-to-understand terms and conditions.
“It comes down to this issue that we talk about a lot in privacy: that people want to feel safe and that feeling is often at odds with privacy,” said Jen Caltrider, founder and lead researcher of Mozilla's Privacy Not Included guide. The sun.
“The downside is that we now have cameras everywhere recording all the time and that gets in the way of our privacy.”
But there are ways to get the best of both worlds, if you're willing to trade cloud storage for local storage.
Although Caltrider is a staunch critic of security technology, she has cameras in and around her home that she purchased “specifically because they have local storage.”
“That's a good thing for consumers to look for: local storage. Because once something leaves your house, you no longer have control over it,” she explains.
Consumers should also look for security companies that have end-to-end encryption available, as this means no one can see your footage.
Finally, be wise and respectful about where you place your cameras because the last thing you want is to be caught with your pants down or risk a £100,000 fine.