alt Hacker NewsIP Crawl: Living atlas of open webcams discovered on the public internet
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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, seemingly so detatched from human connection even with someone watching like some kind of otherworldly spectator.
Nothing changed compared to 2012 https://web.archive.org/web/20151013010243/http://internetce...
> As a rule of thumb, if you believe that "nobody would connect that to the Internet, really nobody", there are at least 1000 people who did.
@dang Shouldn't there be a warning in the title? Atlas makes it sound like pins on a map. I for one would be highly uncomfortable to open this and see something private that someone has unwittingly shared with the internet.
I also question whether this site really fits with HN's values. By being so highly ranked here, a great number of eyeballs are being directed at cameras that are clearly not supposed to be publically accessible. At a minimum that doesn't seem especially kind.
Someone keeping an eye on their (illegal?) cannabis pants in the UK? https://ipcrawl.com/?cam=3892f36f150ff9db
Hehe, this one has a feeding tray with a novelty sign on it:
> Baiting deer is illegal!
> This corn pile is intended for squirrels, chipmunks, and other such critters.
> Any deer found eating this corn will be shot!
Site won't load for me, but I remember in the late 2000s when I was a kid, I found online some string you could type into Google and it would give you unsecured webcams in the results. (Not sure why Google was indexing random people's home IPs, how does the crawler even end up there?)
I recall most of them were in Asia.. street cameras, supermarkets.. then I suddenly found myself looking into someone's bedroom.
Fortunately it was empty, but I promptly shat myself and turned off my computer.
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.
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.
So many cameras pointed at billboards. I assume it's a quality assurance thing.
All these “is this ethical” comments remind of similar discussions happening in the IMG_0416 articles, about YouTube video that were most likely not meant to be scene publicly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42102506
Meanwhile I have thingino firmware on the camera with 64+ long pass running on local nvr on a separate lan reachable through vpn only, and I still physically cover the lens when I sit in the living room, crazy stuff.
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...
Hah, someone from UK seems to have a camera pointing to his cannabis plants... Hopefully the guy has a "loicense" for that, otherwise it would be a hilarious way to get busted
People hating on this project should ask themselves, should Shodan be taken down too? Because you can easily find these camera feeds on there too.
I might be wrong, but I have a very very big suspicion that this website is fake and probably a scam of some way.
If you look at it, all "feeds" that are without any moving part or human are "live", and when there is anything that could have movements, then it is a "snapshot" that doesn't move.
And then there is this very funny one that I'm quite sure is AI generated: https://ipcrawl.com/?page=2&cam=63f7feaf5042d223 The picture: blob:https://ipcrawl.com/939da98f-dfbf-4019-8518-8bfbdfbcb8df
Perhaps someone could have some fun with this...
Feeding faked looped security camera footage is a classic plot device in many films, and could make some good comedy!
These days you could do with AI. Godzilla over Tokyo anyone?
I thought it all had to be fake but, thinking it would be innocent, did watch what seems to have been the priests’s concluding procession for 430 Saturday vigil at St Martin of Tours in Louisville which I had to labor a bit to identify At first I thought ‘who goes to church Saturday afternoon’ - and not a bad crowd for Louisville on a Saturday afternoon. God knows how such a thing turns up.
Totally left field request I know but does anyone know of a webcam that can do RTSP/sane protocol and long focus (think looking outside at landscape)?
Imagine you're at work and there's a camera behind you filming everything you do and it's just out in the open.
I’m more interested in how they do large scans without their ISP or hosting provider going bananas about it.
Droitwich, UK, is a bit revealing.
I feel like a small group of Geo Guesser pros could organize a nice competition for them selves and at the same time make a big service to lots of people.
One word: crazy
What, no plotting on a map?
Seems a bit shifty to be honest...
What is the goal?
And they've created a reddit page specifically for this!
There's a number of streams from resorts and swimming pools, may be a good idea in case kids get into trouble around the water.
Adults too, if you had a pool like this wouldn't everybody want to share their "sex pool party cam"?
Imagine if someone put plausible but strange/shocking fake videos on an open port for the voyeurs to think real and freak out about.
Off topic: Is there anyone doing any research on how to use Claude/Agents to design websites that don't look so, "Claude"?
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 are.