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

ipcrawl.com

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

#81

Post by mmooss »

ryandrake wrote: post #68
mmooss wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One method (for many trans-NAT routing issues) is the manufacturer provides a proxy on the Internet, creates a secure connection between camera and proxy (controlling both ends, they should be able to navigate NAT issues, etc.), and then securely publishes the video. The manufacturer could encrypt the video E2E so they can't see it. This also hides the camera's location and IP. All with informed consent of course. Ed…

But then you’re tethered to the device manufacturer and probably need other Terrible UX like an account/credentials, password resets, and so on. And that tether also opens the door for the company to remote control the product, spy through telemetry, and remotely “alter the deal” at their whim. Some people might be ok with this but a “tether to the company” is a deal breaker to me for most products.

For me too, but we can manage keys, firewalls, routing, IP addresses, etc. The issue is a solution for the vast public of end users who can't do those things. Anyway, the vendor could offer the proxy as an optional service, and let you and I do what we want in some advanced mode.

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

#83

Post by QuantumNomad_ »

naturalmovement wrote: post #70

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 still don’t understand how someone can end up accidentally exposing things to the public internet. With every ISP I have ever had in my country, it’s all NAT by default. Whatever I connect to my network, wired or wireless, would not be publicly accessible just like that unless I really really went out of my way to make it publicly accessible.

How do so many people end up exposing these cameras to the public internet? Are their ISPs not using NAT by default? Are the users jumping through hoops in order to open it up?

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

#84

Post by functionmouse »

ryandrake wrote: post #71
naturalmovement wrote: post #70

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, it really isn't...

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

#85

Post by wyager »

naturalmovement wrote: post #70

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…

99.9% of normies have a router NATing all their traffic

It takes active effort to expose a camera publicly

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

#86

Post by Phil_Latio »

QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #83
naturalmovement wrote: post #70

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 still don’t understand how someone can end up accidentally exposing things to the public internet. With every ISP I have ever had in my country, it’s all NAT by default. Whatever I connect to my network, wired or wireless, would not be publicly accessible just like that unless I really really went out of my way to make it publicly accessible. How do so many people end up exposing these cameras to the public interne…

UPnP is not disabled by default on all routers, especially older ones. So devices may just try to port-forward certain control or media ports.

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

#87

Post by Jordan-117 »

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…

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.

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

#88

Post by pedromlsreis »

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…

I think this kind of websites show you the humanity true colours, we don't usually think about that.

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

#89

Post by 1e1a »

QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #83
naturalmovement wrote: post #70

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 still don’t understand how someone can end up accidentally exposing things to the public internet. With every ISP I have ever had in my country, it’s all NAT by default. Whatever I connect to my network, wired or wireless, would not be publicly accessible just like that unless I really really went out of my way to make it publicly accessible. How do so many people end up exposing these cameras to the public interne…

Many consumer routers allow any connected device to configure port forwarding using UPnP. If you want, you can play around with this using a client such as miniupnpc's example client.

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

#90

Post by ben_w »

ryandrake wrote: post #71
naturalmovement wrote: post #70

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.

Everything is a bad analogy, because the internet has something like 6 billion of us on it these days.

We evolved for small tribes, e.g. Dunbar's number is ~150. Roughly 1/129 of the people on the internet are software developers, so in the days of everyone living in villages your in-group would include roughly one person who thinks like we think.

"Inadvertently live-streaming to the 1/129 of the world who consider searches like this to be trivial, with zero feedback unless you found your home accidentally went viral" is not like anything we otherwise experience.

If anything, projecting onto a nearby sidewalk as you describe is more like "I was bathing after my day's work scribing for the king and wouldn't you know it, that 𒈗𒍠𒄀𒋛 living by the temple decided to walk right in and say hi! Doesn't even think to knock, just opened my front door and walked right in.", while the closest thing you can find to accidental live webcams in old writing is gods spying on mortals for fun, making us the Anansi, the Loki, the Eshu. And for the furries, the Coyote.

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