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Comment by pizza | Hacker News Reader

By the way, how are privacy-minded HNers monitoring their homes? Going with Ring (or similar) or more traditional alarm services?

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Two large, loud dogs.

edit: Before I get a bunch of downvote nonsense, this is a serious answer. Dogs (especially big ones that bark when excited) are terrific home protection. No intruder is going to risk a tussle with a couple of big dogs hell-bent on protecting their home. Plus they're totally good with people they already know and trust arriving, even if we aren't there. All a camera will do is record the fact that you're being robbed.

I believe that has been advice in lieu of security systems for decades. That metal front gate opens, the giant head of that pit bull/mastiff mix pops up with a "woof", and no one has to know that a piece of cheese would allow you slip right past him. I didn't get him for "protection", the dog needed a home and no one else was taking him. But his size and looks do have their perks.

Didn't Myth Busters do a show on how a piece of steak will get you past all but specifically-trained guard dogs? The only danger one would face with our dogs is getting knocked down while they try and get the steak.

Sure, if someone is really determined to get past guard dogs, they can. But a casual burglar isn't going to bother. One of mine is 95 pounds of black lab/german shepherd mutt with a massive baritone bark, but he's totally harmless, except for maybe knocking you over. The other one is 35 pounds and so cute that people assume he's a she, but he's actually bitten at least three different people while overprotecting the house and yard, and I have no doubt he'd die fighting. (And the new next door neighbor learned what he already knew, which was to not stick your hand over the fence to pet the barking dog who doesn't know you and is very concerned that you're in the yard of his friends, even when that dog is small and cute.)

What proportion of burglaries are committed by "casual" perpetrators? Steak is cheap.

Sounds like you should be more concerned about losing your assets in a civil lawsuit than through burglary.

Shocking as it may seem, I don't care.

I have dogs because I love them. Their value as a home security system is just a bonus.

While most dogs might get easily distracted by food, most will sense when their owner is in fear or danger and will attempt to protect them irregardless of the distraction.

My pit gets upset if someone stresses me out over the phone. I would pity anyone who tried to come in my house and mess with me. I sleep very well at night.

depends a lot on the character of the dog, one of my dogs was food oriented for reward the Mals I have don't touch food even from anyone until they hear the OK. This can be trained away and is an essential part of French Ring (or Schutzhund) brevet. e.g. the the training police dogs get, and usually can't be enticed with food (at least when well conditioned not to - even in absence of an owner or command).

a large loud dog[s] with a litter of pups works even better.

[plus]

to extend the logic, defending a litter takes great priority over a steak snack.

Indeed. When pitched a security product on Shark Tank, Robert Herjavek said a home security vendor once told him the best security is "get a dog." I never worry about anyone coming in my house with a Pit Bull and a Mountain Cur inside. :-)

Dogs are poor witnesses, and sadly, the penalty for poison is pretty low in most areas of the country.

All a camera will do is record the fact that you're being robbed.

A security system often has decent sensors to alert you even over the phone which dogs do have trouble with.

Most robbers are probably not unethical enough to resort to killing pets in order to rob a house. Most robbers would probably rather just rob a house without dogs than one with dogs.

Dogs likely raise the barrier to entry for a robbery and criminals will usually just choose easier targets.

Dogs raise a barrier, but these are people trying to rob your house. The ethical argument goes right out the window.

If you are going to get a dog to be part of your family then do that, but getting a dog as a security system is just a poor idea.

There is a big difference between robbery and murder. Just because you commit a crime doesn't mean you lack empathy.

A lot of folks (including the law) don't consider killing dogs murder. You are dealing with people with low or no morals.

probably depends. 2 or 3 is better than 1 in that case. Although where I live now we have gipsy gangs roaming the hoods and kidnap your dogs - then make you pay a ransome to get them back. If you don't pay you get an ear or the tail (or worse) on your porch.

EDIT: small dogs can be an advantage in this case https://twitter.com/thegrugq/status/973969277647638529

the deterrent is the racket they make (no matter their size). At least that puts off the non in advance planned robberies (where we lived there was a big divide between rich/poor so it was mostly junkies trying to enter holiday homes)

As someone who's had the misfortune of living next to poorly trained dogs, I really hope your neighbours won't be able to hear their barking.

seconded.

2 Belgian Malinois trained in French Ring which is the French equivalent of "Schutzhund" (minus the tracking). 3 years old they won't take food from strangers and are stable and confident as fuck. They once pinned a junkie into a corner of the garden which jumped the fence to burgle us while we were out. He was stuck for several hours (until the neighbors called us to inform us that "they're barking an awful lot today". The guy wasn't harmed but neither did he dare to move. :D

Though the reason we got these boys was because our border collie was getting really old and let 2 guys jump the fence and grab everything from the terrace while we were having a BBQ in the back yard (head-desk). We only found out because they grinned and waved to my daughter who was going to the front entrance to grab some stuff from the kitchen. Also she (the dog) wasn't trained like the Mals.

Sounds like you live in a dangerous neighborhood. Stay safe, friend!

Talk of dogs as home defense always makes me think of this reddit thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eewou/iama_retired_ca...

I got a Xiaomi Dafang camera and flashed it with OSS firmware, and all such devices in my network have no access to the internet or to other devices. I connect to them from the outside through an authenticated HTTP proxy (or WireGuard).

The same way people have for centuries. There’s a lock on the door.

More generally I protect myself (including my privacy) by not living in a constant state of fear.

I have an RCA doorbell camera. It stores locally on the included card (can upgrade this if you want). Then I can watch the videos through my phone (which connects to the camera to read the internal storage). On the app itself, there is room for 4 total cameras. I've considered adding another camera (RCA has a few non-doorbell ones also). My main concern wasn't security (this is outside my house) anyway, but it was that I didn't want another monthly charge for something.

I use Blue Iris and a variety of cheap cameras that I've acquired over the years. Remote access is done via an IPSec VPN. I also use Home Assistant and various other devices to monitor other things in the house - temperature (since freezing water pipes is a concern), water level in the sump, etc.

I don't do anything with alerting yet, but there are many ways to solve this.

Having a next door neighbour who's retired and really good at spotting when things are out of the ordinary helps too.

We've got some Nest outdoor cameras on our front door, back yard, and alley-facing garage.

I used to just use a bunch of Foscam's but I recently moved to Canary for the auto arming and push notifications.

Here is their security page. https://canary.is/security/

A Dahua DVR with wired cameras. Dahua has a free and painless P2P connection service that lets you view the DVR from the Internet without exposing a port in your router.

I'm not entirely at ease with using a cloud service, but I'm way less comfortable with directly exposing the DVR's access directly to the Internet.

I put up a SimpliSafe system at my house, and it's pretty nice overall. There's a security camera included, but it has a physical shutter that opens with an audible "click" whenever the feed is on. I'm a bit too lazy to be "privacy-minded" but it's a nice touch.

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