This is a HUGE flaw regarding the Wyze Camera service, Wyze Cam V3 currently advertises itself as a security camera company, but it does not have the basic redundancy using their premium cloud service, which is a paid service for their cloud integration, not to mention the additional low cost home security system that appears to act like a professional system (at times, it does). However, in this case, it’s far from anything “security based” from my current experience.
On the 14th of April, I had the police at my home over matters not related to me, which did involve a squatting tenant that is now finally gone. During the time the police were there, I had two SD cards that went missing with the rubber cover swiveled to the side where the SD card goes, which leads me to believe that the cops helped themselves to my data and property without a warrant to do so or permission from myself, the landlord… Here in NJ, that’s considered a crime.
I have two cams above the garage overhang? or Eave? Whatever you want to call it, it’s about 8–9 ft from the ground to cover the garage entrance, including an adjacent door next to the garage, for which I had one above the door and the other on the far left, covering THAT door, including steps that lead to the main floors of this 2-family dwelling. All my other cameras are connected to the eave, under the gutters, running the power into crawl spaces and attics, which, of course, are higher up, but do not cover the garage area, as that’s covered by those 2 cameras that I’m talking about as far as the theft of the SD cards goes.
How come there is no redundancy built into the cameras that will alert you IF a camera gets unplugged or if an SD card is to be taken out? Your basic NVR camera systems do have anti-tamper proof tech in them for these reasons, including much more, such as violently trying to rip a camera down, spray painting the lense, among many other software related features for those “oh crap” moments.
If Wyze is advertising themselves as a security service, as I do own their home security kit as stated, sensors, and 7 cameras on the property, including an NVR 2K system that has been out of commission for over 6 months due to NVR issues, I have time to fix it as I placed my faith in the Wyze camera solution, which has failed miserably. I have called Wyze regarding this issue, as I am paying for their extended cloud coverage, but it still has a cool down after every (x) amount of time, rendering itself useless to me. They are telling me that their data “pool” has gone past the time of them being able to access it. which all this happened on April 15th, just last Friday. However, this situation occurred on that Friday afternoon, when Wyze closed their call centers at 4 p.m. central time through the weekend, re-opening on Monday morning, the day I immediately called back to help resolve this matter.
First of all, their cameras and software need to have some sort of anti tampering system put in place. If an SD card gets taken out, I should get a notification immediately. What if it was a burglar? Which brings me to my next question. How is this security? There is no way of pulling any logs yourself that will give you any info regarding if the camera lost power, if the SD card was removed, if the camera was forced out of alignment, or if the lens was painted over. Those are all very serious and necessary matters that need to be addressed, as they are major security flaws that are currently going unnoticed. Yes, it’s a $35 camera, I understand. However, there should be some kind of tamper prevention implemented, especially if you’re paying them to secure your home with hundreds of dollars’ worth of equipment, which includes, once again, the home security system kit, and additional door and window sensors, including motion sensors, not to mention monthly fees that do stack up.
Apparently, wyze is still escalling this issue to which I think nothing will be done about so I’m making others aware of this as this is a major flaw in their system that needs to be resolved. At the very least, they should write a script to notify the user if the SD card has been removed. For god’s sake, you know, the stuff that stores sometimes critical data that is no longer there because someone gave it a “reach around” and took it out. The software engineers need to stop playing [mod edit] while giving themselves “reach arounds” to prevent this type of stuff from happening. I can probably write the necessary script for something as simple as an SD card being removed that would trigger a notification and a log of events. Of course, doing so would infringe on Wyze’s customer agreement, as you’re not allowed to reverse engineer or tamper with their software if you wanted to.
I’m getting my NVR up and running starting today (garbage if it crapped the bed) and re-hooking up my older security system if this issue is not resolved, as I did put a little too much trust in Wyze, which surely proves the saying/theory “if it sounds too good to be true, it normally is.”
MOD NOTE: Post edited to conform to the Community Guidelines.
