Live data from Hacker News

IP Crawl: Living atlas of open webcams discovered on the public internet

ipcrawl.com

121–130 of 194 posts

Re: IP Crawl: Living atlas of open webcams discovered on the public internet

#121
post #114

Site won't load for me, but I remember in the late 2000s when I was a kid, I found online some string you could type into Google and it would give you unsecured webcams in the results. (Not sure why Google was indexing random people's home IPs, how does the crawler even end up there?) I recall most of them were in Asia.. street cameras, supermarkets.. then I suddenly found myself looking into someone's bedroom. Fortu…

[deleted]

Re: IP Crawl: Living atlas of open webcams discovered on the public internet

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how plausible it would be to deduce where a given webcam is (some combination of IP data, context clues, visible landmarks, maybe face searching) and then contact the owner to let them know. There used to be this fun site called where-is-this.com where people could share images of public places for others to try to track down; it would be nice to harness something like that for good.

I feel like I’ve read about three letter agencies using the humming of power lines to geo-locate where a video/audio was recorded. “Electrical Network Frequency (ENF) analysis”. I’m going to dig more and will leave some links when I get back to a computer.

When, not where.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0elNU0iOMY

Re: IP Crawl: Living atlas of open webcams discovered on the public internet

#123

Everyone: For a moment forget everything you know about computers and wonder if perhaps 99% of normies are just following the directions on the package of their $19 Chinese IP camera. They have no idea what a firewall is, or what the "public internet" even means. There's also a difference between your neighbor not closing her blinds and you using a telescope to look inside her apartment, which is what sites like this…

I'd also ask us tech savvy people to practice some humility. Yes, the people setting up these cameras are not following security best practices. But are you sure that you will not make the same mistakes? Are you sure you have never exposed anything you should not have on the Internet, and never will, even as you age? Let anyone among you who is without fumbling security be the first to throw a stone.

pfffa haha, i don't drink instant coffee and am not religious, therefore am intellectually god like compared to

Re: IP Crawl: Living atlas of open webcams discovered on the public internet

#124

Everyone: For a moment forget everything you know about computers and wonder if perhaps 99% of normies are just following the directions on the package of their $19 Chinese IP camera. They have no idea what a firewall is, or what the "public internet" even means. There's also a difference between your neighbor not closing her blinds and you using a telescope to look inside her apartment, which is what sites like this…

I'd also ask us tech savvy people to practice some humility. Yes, the people setting up these cameras are not following security best practices. But are you sure that you will not make the same mistakes? Are you sure you have never exposed anything you should not have on the Internet, and never will, even as you age? Let anyone among you who is without fumbling security be the first to throw a stone.

I worked for a small, local ISP in the mid 2000s. I don't think I made any stupid mistakes on my part, but I had plenty of coworkers who did. To be fair, people were often actively hostile to security concerns back then. It's not much better now, but at least not everything gets a public IP by default.

Re: IP Crawl: Living atlas of open webcams discovered on the public internet

#125

Everyone: For a moment forget everything you know about computers and wonder if perhaps 99% of normies are just following the directions on the package of their $19 Chinese IP camera. They have no idea what a firewall is, or what the "public internet" even means. There's also a difference between your neighbor not closing her blinds and you using a telescope to look inside her apartment, which is what sites like this…

I'd also ask us tech savvy people to practice some humility. Yes, the people setting up these cameras are not following security best practices. But are you sure that you will not make the same mistakes? Are you sure you have never exposed anything you should not have on the Internet, and never will, even as you age? Let anyone among you who is without fumbling security be the first to throw a stone.

Personally, I'm not a security expert. I've worked in web for near 20 years, on some reasonably large network projects so I've picked up things here and there, but I still defer to our actual security experts when we roll things out

That said, I'm not 100% convinced I could set up a webcam streaming online without accidentally exposing it to the wider internet. Maybe 95% sure? But if even I couldn't guarantee it, what chance does your average joe who mostly only uses his computer for netflix have?

Re: IP Crawl: Living atlas of open webcams discovered on the public internet

#127

Everyone: For a moment forget everything you know about computers and wonder if perhaps 99% of normies are just following the directions on the package of their $19 Chinese IP camera. They have no idea what a firewall is, or what the "public internet" even means. There's also a difference between your neighbor not closing her blinds and you using a telescope to look inside her apartment, which is what sites like this…

> There's also a difference between your neighbor not closing her blinds and you using a telescope to look inside her apartment, which is what sites like this are.

How else are things supposed to change. Hopefully this will embarrass some oligarch enough to force companies to close their loopholes.

Re: IP Crawl: Living atlas of open webcams discovered on the public internet

#128

Everyone: For a moment forget everything you know about computers and wonder if perhaps 99% of normies are just following the directions on the package of their $19 Chinese IP camera. They have no idea what a firewall is, or what the "public internet" even means. There's also a difference between your neighbor not closing her blinds and you using a telescope to look inside her apartment, which is what sites like this…

What could go possibly go wrong with “point and shoot”?

Re: IP Crawl: Living atlas of open webcams discovered on the public internet

#130

I thought it all had to be fake but, thinking it would be innocent, did watch what seems to have been the priests’s concluding procession for 430 Saturday vigil at St Martin of Tours in Louisville which I had to labor a bit to identify At first I thought ‘who goes to church Saturday afternoon’ - and not a bad crowd for Louisville on a Saturday afternoon. God knows how such a thing turns up.

Saturday vigil masses are rather popular as they cover a Catholic’s Sunday obligation without requiring getting up early.
Post reply on HN