I have no sympathy *at all* ...

[rslade]

OK, bear with me. I will get to the security part.) (It may not be worth it, but ...)

I've been burying my aunt over the weekend. It was expected, she'd had a good innings (she was awarded "Citizen of the Century," among other things), and it was great to swap stories with others who knew and loved her.

Number One Daughter has recently moved fairly close to that area, so we stayed with her. Beautiful place, built on a slope, way too many stairs for us to live there. For complicated reasons they have two dogs: Marley, who is very old and now has arthritis among other things; and Fera, who is young, high-strung, somewhat nervous, and extremely high energy. Despite disparate ages and temperaments "the pack" has a great relationship.

Marley doesn't do stairs any better than we do. She has developed a weird front-legs-together-back-legs-together double bounce method of getting down stairs, but can't get back up. But when she gets to the bottom of the house, she can get out onto the deck, then down more stairs, then up the slope (which is steep but at least not stairs) to the front door.

The house came with an alert system for the front door. A motion sensor triggers a camera and sends a picture to Number One Daughter's cell phone.

However, most of the time this is unnecessary. Fera, noting that Marley is at the front door, will run down through the house, out the back, up the slope, check with Marley, then race back down the slope, and up through the house until she finds Number One Daughter. Aside from the specificity of this activity, it's easy to tell that this is about Marley, because Fera gets a very distinct look on her face. (It's all a very "What Lassie? Timmy hasn't fallen down the well, but is hiding out from aliens who want to abduct him, while running away from a dinosaur that Farmer Jones created from old DNA that was lying around the barn?" type situation.) Fera's alert usually comes before the high tech door system.

Thing is, this is one of those cheap "security" systems that have wretched security themselves, and are probably sending data back to China. Which means that, somewhere in some monitoring station in China, someone keeps getting, and having to pay attention to, alerts about Marley needing to get in the front door. And the system behind it has to commit bandwidth, storage, and processing for it.

I have absolutely no sympathy for those people at all ...

[AppDefects]

---

@rslade wrote:

Thing is, this is one of those cheap "security" systems that have wretched security themselves, and are probably sending data back to China. Which means that, somewhere in some monitoring station in China, someone keeps getting, and having to pay attention to, alerts about Marley needing to get in the front door. And the system behind it has to commit bandwidth, storage, and processing for it.

---

My sympathies go out to you in the passing of your Aunt.

Have you been able to actually prove/trace that the security "events" are being monitored in China? 

[Caute_cautim]

@rsladeCondolences OM on your loss and dear friend; why do we simply accept these things to intrude on our lives with the knowledge they are feeding information to somewhere - it would be relatively easy to prove or disprove that the target was worthwhile monitoring, by setting up some juicy enticing activity with fake information.  The expectation is will provide what you require it to do, but under the consumers act, is is also potentially doing other activities above and beyond the expectations of the system.  

Whether this is wanted or not, it is an intrusion into one's private life, and you have a reasonable expectation that this simply should not happen.

Regards

Caute_cautim

[dcontesti]

Rob,

Condolences on your aunt.

I agree with you no sympathy attitude.  

I just purchased a new condo, the vendor says "oh it comes with state of the art intrusion detection system that will send alerts to your phone or someone else that you would like".  

He couldn't tell me anything on the system, like where was the data going first, who could see it, how long it would be kept...you know the simple stuff.

My answer to him "instead of installing it, please just give me a discount for the equipment......" .  The look on his face was priceless, wish I had of had my camera with me 😉

Regards

d

[rslade]

> AppDefects (Contributor I) posted a new reply in Industry News on 05-28-2019

>   My sympathies go out to you in the passing of your Aunt.  
> Have you been able to actually prove/trace that the security "events" are being
> monitored in China? 

The best defence is a good, offensive, non-sequitor ...

====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer)
rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@computercrime.org
Vikings? There ain't no vikings here. Just us honest farmers.
The town was burning, the villagers were dead. They didn't need
those sheep anyway. That's our story and we're sticking to it.
- Dan Sorenson
victoria.tc.ca/techrev/rms.htm http://twitter.com/rslade
http://blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/author/p1/
https://is.gd/RotlWB

[denbesten]

@AppDefects wrote:
Have you been able to actually prove/trace that the security "events" are being
monitored in China? 

---

@rslade wrote:
The best defence is a good, offensive, non-sequitor ...

---

Ditto regarding your aunt.

I thjink @AppDefects  raises a reasonable "sequitor". A good offense generally requires understanding one's opponent.  My immediate thought after seeing the news reports of cameras phoning home was firmware version checks.  Although firmware checks have their pros/cons, they also ought to elicit a different response than video transfers.

Did you actually install anything to address the camera's communications?  If so, I'd be curious to know if the volume, directionality, and frequency of traffic is sufficient to support video transfer. 

[rslade]

> dcontesti (Community Champion) posted a new reply in Industry News on 05-28-2019

>   The look on his face was priceless,
> wish I had of had my camera with me

🙂

(Yes, I see what you did, there. Very good 🙂