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Comment by yters | Hacker News Reader

I also saw a very popular security camera product called Wyze that surreptitiously sends customer information to computers outside the US.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1GN9BTTWQZK3P/re... https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2NX523G3R0CZ8/re...

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Since those reviews were posted, Wyze has actually enabled support for RTSP, which would address some of the issues those reviews mentioned. I haven't tested it out myself, but it seems to be working for a lot of people. I'm not sure if it still attempts to send data back to its own mothership though.

How does RTSP solve the privacy problem of potentially sending user information to another country?

After initial sideloading of the new firmware (unsupported IIRC, you're on your own), you can grab the RTSP credentials and disconnect the camera entirely. It is usable as an offline IP camera after that. No cloud, just give it LAN access only.

Before this there was no non-proprietary way to access.

RTSP has nothing to do with privacy. It's just another way to schlep streaming media around the internet.

They may have also stopped sending data back to their own servers, but that's completely orthogonal.

Wyze also downloads crap tons of something.

1 of my wyze downloaded 350 MB while uploaded 5 GB

Another downloaded 2.5 GB while uploaded 150 GB - Always on RTSP.

How is that different from all the products that send customer information to the US?

I guess maybe we USians don't want to send intel to a country that doesn't necessarily have our best interest at heart.

Well, non USians like me don’t really have a choice

Yes, that's a fair point. The same concern would apply.

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