Don’t get caught with your pants down by trolls if you’re camera shy
I’VE NEVER felt quite so aware as I do these days. The volume of stuff being slung at us every day seems to push our capacity for awareness to its limits.
And thanks to the feverish competition for that awareness, we’ve become only too aware of the phrase “raising awareness” and the attention-grabbing activities attached to it – the Ice Bucket Challenge being a notable recent example.
But just when you thought you were incapable of further awareness, along comes a website featuring live feeds from security cameras, many of them in people’s homes, facilitated (somewhat ironically) by lax security on the part of the manufacturers and the people using them. What’s the excuse given for this breach of our privacy? Raising awareness.
Earlier this week, Vice reported that this site carries feeds from more than 150 coun- tries, including about 1 700 cameras from the UK. They show people going about their everyday business, most of it dull, some of it not, all of it unnecessarily voyeuristic.
The pastime, known as IP Cam Trolling, has been going on since home security cams became linked to the internet. Most items connected to the internet can be accessed by someone with enough ingenuity, but in these cases all it takes is to use the default camera login and password, which, in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal, the owners haven’t seen fit to change.
Suddenly, the camera that’s been so carefully positioned to observe intruders nabbing your silverware is being used to transmit images of a seminaked you to some giggling hacker. Seeing yourself in this state on the inter net might raise awareness, but let’s face it, the aim of the hack was to catch you unawares.
This conflicted ethical stance is nicely summed up at the beginning of a YouTube video in which the video’s creator bemoans the decreasing number of video feeds available as owners wise up.
“I started uploading these videos to make people aware of the security problems with inappropriately configured camera systems,” the creator says, “but it’s sad to see a great source of lulz (laughs) coming to an end.”
Exposing our lax security can also serve as a useful lesson.
In 2010, the website Please Rob Me made people think more carefully about announcing their location on Twitter when they went out.
Spare a thought, however, for the person who, unaware of being featured on a live web feed, suffers in ignorance so that the rest of us benefit.
And be thankful that it’s not you. – The Independent