IP Crawl: Living atlas of open webcams discovered on the public internet • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by jodrellblank » Mon, Jun 29, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

halperter wrote: post #8

This website---naturally, I think---weirds me out. Many of these cameras are in private spaces, with some places you most certainly don't want people to have live feeds of. It's quite disturbing how you can see personal snapshots of people's lives without them knowing. There's a perverse feeling of dread about being able to see into someone's life and being able to paradoxically watch someone eat dinner alone, seemin…

What weirds me out is how empty it is of humans. These are some, but mostly empty rooms, empty roads, parked cars, empty gardens, empty warehouses, empty shops, empty chairs... page after page even of places like Mexico City or Berlin Germany where there are many millions of people.

You'd be forgiven for thinking this was the 'after' footage of an end-of-the-orld movie where all the humans have been disappeared, Mary Celeste style.

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

#192

Post by wolvoleo » Mon, Jun 29, 2026, 5:39 PM UTC

hdgvhicv wrote: post #178

wolvoleo wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I mean the cameras have these settings. Some cameras do also open ports with UPnP but it's rare in my experience. I think these cams are more users who are a bit technical but not too much to realise the implications.

Ok so aside from some malware running inside your security perimeter what’s the threat? Yes weak passwords are bad, but if nobody can access it it’s not the end of the world.

Well this very site is why it's bad. And things like Shodan.

It's the swiss cheese model. I'm sure most of these people didn't mean to make their cam accessible to the internet. If there had been a unique username/pw they wouldn't have got exposed.

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

#193

Post by win311fwg » Mon, Jun 29, 2026, 6:10 PM UTC

pibaker wrote: post #111

My_Name wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it more like that there are things you can do to make sure nobody else gets into your home, like locking the door. If your door is unlocked, either through ignorance or negligence, it's still not right for someone else to just walk into your home and look through stuff you thought was private. Sure, they can do it, but just being able to easily do something doesn't make it right.

You'll be surprised by the number of people who thinks if you leave your internet door unlocked then your internet belongings are free to take. There is someone in this very thread arguing that having an internet enable camera in your home turns your home into a public place. It is also funny, and depressing that many of the same people who think might makes right on the internet ends up lamenting how fucked up life…

Yeah, you might think everyone would realize that there is no technical means to leave your unsupervised door unlocked on the internet. Unlike a physical door, if nobody comes to answer the internet door, it doesn't exist. However, it is impossible for everyone to understand everything.

With that said, the specific someone you refer I am sure has a valid point. When you knock on someone's door and nicely ask for a cup of sugar and whomever is answering the door happily gives it to you, it is reasonable to assume that is something you can take. They would say "no" otherwise.

I get it might be a friend that doesn't fully understand the boundaries of the homeowner answering the door, but it is unrealistic to place the onus on the neighbour looking for a cup of sugar to decide whether or not the occupant is acting in the interests of the homeowner. The fact that the person is already in the home to be able to answer the door implies that there is trust in that person to do right by the home.

By the same token, if the homeowner found out about the cup of sugar that they didn't want given away, most people would address it with the friend to see that it doesn't happen again, not go on a rampage with the neighbour. It is well understood that anyone within the home saying "yes" is to be considered authoritative. It is the only reasonable way.

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

#194

Post by My_Name » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 2:54 PM UTC

throw310822 wrote: post #168

My_Name wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I won't bother trying to talk further with someone who thinks in false dichotomies and cannot understand that two things can be true at the same time. When I'm in my home, I can consider that private and have a right to privacy, and at the same time there can be a camera in there broadcasting to a million people so in no stretch of the word do I have privacy, and my home is not private, and those two truths are n…

> When I'm in my home, I can consider that private and have a right to privacy Agreed > at the same time there can be a camera in there broadcasting to a million people so in no stretch of the word do I have privacy and my home is not private Agreed. And this is the situation we're discussing now: people who are in a private space, whose privacy is violated by an ip camera that makes their private things accessible t…

What I am doing is correcting you on your asserting that my statement was "completely wrong from a concrete standpoint"

You just said :

"> When I'm in my home, I can consider that private and have a right to privacy Agreed > at the same time there can be a camera in there broadcasting to a million people so in no stretch of the word do I have privacy and my home is not private Agreed."

So, to paraphrase, "A space can be considered private by the occupant, but the addition of an IP camera makes it not private.", right?

Those are not contradictory statements.