Why We Don’t Recommend Ring Cameras

binaryphile@kbin.social to Technology@beehaw.org – 210 points – Why We Don’t Recommend Ring Cameras
wired.com

They’re affordable and ubiquitous, but homeowners shouldn’t be able to act as vigilantes.

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What’s the alternative? Some China based brand? I mean seriously they did not name ANY alternatives. I’m an American and would rather be spied on by the home team.

Edit: a user corrected me that there’s a link at the bottom for recommended devices. Thank you.

As an American, surely you should be much more concerned about what the US government can do with your information than what the Chinese government can do with your information.

After Snowden's efforts at showing what America was capable of nearly 10 years ago, I'm not at all interested in letting that country have my data

Ubiquiti, an American company.

Appreciate the response. Checking their privacy settings on the app, Ubiquity seems to be the most privacy conscious.

Ubiquity stuff is entirely on-premises, their (optional) cloud service is strictly for auth and remote access. Highly recommended, not just for the privacy conscious. Their ecosystem is also relatively affordable (compared to Aruba and Ruckus) and a joy to setup and maintain. No subscriptions or recurring fees.

Yep just to tack onto this, I find their stuff is fairly easy to stack together as well. Have ended up building my entire home network and security setup with Ubiquiti gear, there's a good Home Assistant integration if you're into that.

Your footage is also stored locally

Can you reliably make it work without buying their router though?

I've been looking at them for a while but I don't want to be forced into their ecosystem.

You can run UniFi Protect on your own server, or use one of their appliances with it, just not as a router, akin to a Eufy HomeBase.

There is a link in the last paragraph to a whole article about which video doorbells they recommend if you want that.

I have a Reolink doorbell. PoE or wired power, SD card local storage, onvif and rtsp support. There's a cloud (no subscription) but you can disable it if you want. I run it fully local with Home Assistant and Frigate NVR. Works like a charm.

I have the same setup, blocked internet access for the cameras and instead access them through my NVR (or HA). Definitely the way to go for any privacy conscious techhead! Also allows you to freely exchange any camera for any other brand to avoid being locked into a single ecosystem.

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