If you have security cameras watching over your business, home, or baby (via baby monitor camera) – this ALERT is for you!
Your cameras have a password protecting it?
Think again!
To start at the beginning…
Security cameras come loaded with pre-set usernames and passwords. A lot of people do not change the pre-set usernames and passwords on the cameras, and leave the cameras set with the username and passwords they came with. The “default” usernames and passwords.
A website called “Insecam” has been found, which indexed 73,011 locations with unsecured security cameras (meaning cameras that have not changed from their pre-set usernames and passwords), in 256 different countries. The site, which has an IP address from Russia, is further broken down into insecure security cameras by manufacturer. Specifically: Foscam, Linksys, Panasonic, some listed only as “IP cameras”. DVRs such as AvTech and Hikvision were also listed. Each link could have up to 8 or 16 channels available (meaning that’s how many security camera views were displayed on one page).
You can choose to view cameras by country. There are 40,746 pages of unsecured cameras, just in the 1st 10 countries. The U.S. had the highest number of links available at 11,046. There are 6536 in South Korea, 4770 in china, 3359 in Mexico, 3285 in France, 2,870 in Italy; 2422 in the U.K.; 2,268 in the Netherlands; 2,220 in Colombia; and 1,970 in India. Like the site boasts, you can see “into the bedrooms of all countries of the world.”
Links available view into businesses, stores, malls, warehouses, parking lots, hotels, hotel pools, baby cribs, bedrooms, living rooms, and kitchens. Recently the cameras viewed even showed the addresses and GoogleMap location, however when I checked the site again, this was removed.
The website claims that the purpose of the site was to “show the importance of settings and changing the security settings on internet cameras. They claim that they have removed “all automatically collected cameras from the site” and that only filtered cameras are available now, so that “none of the cameras on Insecam invade anybody’s private life”. Insecam states they have “also removed all cameras that still use default password settings.” They state they only provide links to “public cameras without password protection at all”.
Insecam isn’t without conscience, and will remove any camera “upon e-mail complaint.” With an email and a direct link to “help facilitate the prompt removal”, they will remove the link to the camera. They also state that if you don’t want to email them, you can simply remove your camera by changing your password from the default password.
Moral of the story: Change Your Password!
Want to check out the site to see if your cameras are on there? Go to: http://www.insecam.org/
Call
1-204-800-3166
For Cyber-Assistance!
Leave a Reply