Am I going insane or is there nowhere in the article where they mention which 6 dash cams have no security concerns?
It’s Which, they expect you to pay a subscription to find out
It’s a click bait article to get you to buy the 3 from their referral links, implying those are OK. You know this is a dumb article when you see this:
Of all the issues we found, weak default wi-fi passwords were the most concerning security vulnerability
Joke’s on them. Mine is a Chinese company. I already know it spies on me. So does my car with its “disabled” cell connection that promises not to broadcast my whereabouts.
So does my car with its “disabled” cell connection that promises not to broadcast my whereabouts.
Find the antenna and physically unplug it.
I’ve been shopping for a dash cam. It seems like all the brands are Chinese companies except Garmin?
I wouldn’t worry about it too much. You can get some without WiFi. You just have to yank the microsd if you want to see the files. The one I have has WiFi but it’s so slow I can’t even preview videos. I have to connect to its WiFi, so unless it’s randomly connecting to open WiFi’s while I’m driving without my knowledge, I can’t see how it would transit much.
Don’t spend too much though. They break after a couple years. Especially if you live in a hot climate like a desert.
Yeah. If you get one that only records to an SD card and has no wireless connections of any kind, it would be pretty hard for that to have any security/privacy concerns.
There is a good case to be made for “keep it simple”. It sounds like a great idea to connect a dashcam to your phone, but that brings so much more complexity into it. Networking, security, updates, changing phone OS and so much more.
I started to buy simple “single purpose” devices without connectivity in the last few years and so far it has gone great. Yes, I might have to take out the SD card and put it in my computer if I want a dashcam video, but I know that my dashcam doesn’t need updates, will work until some hardware failure sometimes in the future, I do not need to worry about some chinese cloud service going down or someone spying on me with the app.
I keep a usbc microsd card reader in my car. Allows me to copy footage right there so I do not have to bring the card to my computer. It’s easy enough to transfer it from there.
I was worried for a moment until I realized they’re talking about smart dashcams.
No shit Sherlock. Why the fuck would you buy a smart dashcam unless you were a fucking idiot who thinks every electronic needs to be connected to the internet?
Because you live in America and need to get the video uploaded before a cop smashes the camera and SD card
This is my dad, thinks it’s essential to have smart devices and I haven’t figured out how to isolate smart devices in openwrt yet
Security issues? In a camera recording to an SD card without any connectivity?
Smart dash cams have wireless connectivity and features that use the internet. This could be tracking technologies, motion detection, voice assistant controls and voice alerts, as well as more advanced features such as automatic cloud backup, real-time alerts and remote viewing.
Oh, there’s your problem…
Smart dash cams? This sounds like an opportunity to buy a couple dupes of my current dash cam before they enshittify the whole market segment.
I made the comment to my passenger a year ago that the image quality of most current dashcams is trash but didn’t full understand it yet. It makes sense now. They’re holding back the good quality, (phone/action cam quality picture) until they can counterbalance it with some bad features. A little bite of poison on a big bite of food is how you get the rats to eat out of the trap. I expect the next gen will be fully connected to he police department at all times.
I’ve been looking into buy a dash cam but I’m always shocked at how bad the picture quality are on them. Which do you recommend? Would love a decent non-smart dash cam.
My cam is a Viofo or something like that, but I can’t recommend any of them. I’ve had l my share of annoyances and I’ve read similar about Garmin, Blackvue, and others. Its also been a few years, so they may have new models, but from what I see online, they look more or less similar.
What I did learn is this:
- Having front and back cams made it easier to pick out a license plate because you have more time to get a clear shot. You can also see what happened before that dickwad cut you off.
- Using a fast microsd card is critical. Don’t expect to throw in any old microsd sitting in your desk drawer.
- If it’s not recording, it does you no good. Check regularly. Make sure you know what the lights mean because 90% of using it is listening for the beep and the light when it starts up.
- Be careful how you wire it up. If it gets power when the car is off, you’ll be swapping batteries if you leave it sit for too long. Some aux plugs are powered when the car is off. Even if your battery can handle it overnight. You will eventually go on vacation and forget to unplug it. Boom! Dead battery. That one happened to my partner, but with an aftermarket seat warmer.
Thank you for the tips! That will certainly help me out.
That’s because low res is perfectly fine for dash cams. You need super high res and to be pretty close in order to capture license plates, so you shouldn’t be relying on the cam to grab the plates. The best thing to do in any situation is to say the plate out loud to capture it on the audio.
Thanks for that information. I did not even think about saying it out loud but that makes sense.
Does anyone remember those SD cards that had wifi broadcasting capabilities for transferring content off of a dumb device? This was like 15 years ago. Seems they’re not available anymore.
ETA: after some research, the brand was eye-fi and they bricked all the cards in 2016 upon going under. There are similar things out there now but availability and price aren’t that great.
I have one of these still in the package that I never used. How could they have bricked it? Very curious about this!
I bought one of those when years ago because of the wacky novelty. The wifi capability was even less reliable than cheap sdcards are for long term storage.
