Live data from Hacker News

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

ipcrawl.com

71–80 of 194 posts

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

#71

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…

Telescope is a bad analogy. This is more like the neighbor is inadvertently projecting a feed from inside their house onto a display outside by the sidewalk for any passers-by to see.

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

#72

Off topic: Is there anyone doing any research on how to use Claude/Agents to design websites that don't look so, "Claude"?

“Give 20 different designs all must be distinct unique and not look averaged like a typical LLM site”

"make no mistakes"

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

#73
post #65

I think the author of the website should next work on some kind of alerting system for the owners of these webcams to let them know they're exposed and how to make them private. Then everyone could get what they want: voyeurs can watch exhibitionists like God intended.

How do you manage that? I tried setting up a specialized directory of type-related websites and pages back around 1999–2001 and trying to find contact info for websites was difficult then when people still had public WHOIS info most of the time. I can’t imagine any scalable way to be able to connect to the owners of cams where you have little more than an IP address to work from.

(Not sure how much metadata there is on the site since it’s currently suffering the hug of death so I can’t see anything at the moment.)

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

#75

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…

Telescope is a bad analogy. This is more like the neighbor is inadvertently projecting a feed from inside their house onto a display outside by the sidewalk for any passers-by to see.

Not really? It’s just like not closing your blinds and being shocked that people on the street can see you.

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

#76
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the website is kind of awesome. If you put a window in your home and opened it to the world is it wrong to look through the window? If someone installed the camera and didn’t understand what they are doing that is on them.

If you’re aware the person wouldn’t want you to do that, yes it’s wrong. Being able to do something is not the same as it being right to do something.

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-legal-to-look-through-someone-el...

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

#77

Definitely an invasion of privacy. I can’t visit this website in good faith. It should be taken down. The point is valuable, and the mission is important, but the ends do not justify the means. If this must be shared, at least use static pictures and don’t stream the content for viewers.

"Your honour I just scanned a list of all devices in the planet and filtered those that looked like cameras and made a website such that even more people can access it even more easily."

I get it if you think this is a legal gray area (it's not), but it's surprising to see how many people seem to think this is plain justified. Makes me think that there's some users that gravitate towards this site because the hacker in hackernews refers to hacking as in accessing systems without permission.

If you think hosting a website like this is ok, I encourage you to talk to a criminal lawyer and consider if you are a criminal. At least do it knowingly, do not pretend shit like this is fine.

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

#78

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…

Telescope is a bad analogy. This is more like the neighbor is inadvertently projecting a feed from inside their house onto a display outside by the sidewalk for any passers-by to see.

No.

This isn’t a passive “walked by the window” thing that you might have unwittingly viewed. To actively search for open cameras by crawling every IP then creating a tool to see them, then choosing to watch the footage is a very active, deliberate choice. No one is viewing this footage without making a multi-step choice to view it.

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

#79
post #74

This seems to just be a map interface to Shodan Images. I've found the exact same camera with the exact same snapshot on both sites. https://images.shodan.io/?query=port%3A554+country%3A%22GB%2... https://ipcrawl.com/imce?cam=069b2971c357edbd

I dont think it is? https://alec.is/posts/ip-crawl-exposing-the-massive-open-web...
Post reply on HN