CNET no longer recommends Wyze products 🤣

I’m not the manufacturer, so no.
Three or four of my version 3s are less than a year old so they would still have warranty on them but you’re better off just buying a new one after shipping etc it’s not worth it.

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Just to clarify, this is also not accurate and there are lots of sources proving this is a misconception and it has been hashed over and debunked many times. Some people who don’t understand how ODM manufacturing works think Xiaomi and Wyze are the same company or owned by the same company or that Wyze bought cameras from Xiaomi. None of that is accurate. Though it would be funny, considering Wyze has SUED Xiaomi in the past and won, which would be ridiculous if they were the same company or owned by the same company, because what stupid company would allow wasting court and lawyers’ fees to have themselves sue themselves.

What you are referring to with the Wyze cam V1 or V2 is also a misunderstanding. In early days, Wyze and Xiaomi did not ever source things from each other. Xiaomi does leverage some of the same ODM suppliers as Wyze does (note there is a difference between ODM and OEM).

Honestly, the majority of companies that make physical products, particularly IoT, tend to partner up with a 3rd party supplier and do ā€œODMā€ manufacturing. Some of them will pay the supplier for an exclusive right to it, while others don’t. Believe it or not, even Apple, Samsung, Amazon, and many, many more rely on 3rd party ODM suppliers to make their devices, rather than doing it all themselves. It’s highly normal in the tech industry.

For example, the iPhone is actually manufactured by Foxconn, not ā€œAppleā€ and Samsung Smartphones and Tablets are actually manufactured by companies like Wistron and Foxconn too. Amazon uses TONS of different ODM suppliers for their various things.

Wyze is no different. They have multiple different ODM partners for various Wyze devices. I have even made threads in here listing many of their suppliers. Not all of Wyze’s suppliers or partners are from China either. With some of them, Wyze has helped design the products themselves, and some of them they have exclusive rights to the design so others can’t use them, but others, they don’t care if other companies use the same or similar design because Wyze maintains a huge advantage in all the added firmware features, etc that they personally add to it in-house that they others don’t have, as well as keeping everything they do on US servers, etc and as a 100% US owned company. As already mentioned, famous example of ODM having similarities is the Wyze V2 camera vs the Xiaomi camera that looked identical to it. The Wyze one was FAR superior with tons more features and a lot better because Xiaomi basically just kept the stock firmware, while Wyze made it tons better for several years and still cheaper. So despite the fact that they both used a similar ODM supplier (Hualai), Wyze was tons better.

Roku and Wyze have a totally different relationship/partnership where Wyze provides them with their smart home tech…Wyze isn’t their ODM, but there is a different kind of partnership there that is similar in some ways.

I do find it funny that a lot of people who argue about brands don’t realize that in some cases they’re both supporting the same supplier, like with iPhones vs Samsung devices often both coming from Foxconn/Han-Hai. Same with a lot of HP vs Dell both coming from Foxconn/Han Hai :joy: The underlying subtext of such fandom are funny to me because both are often actually being made by the same company/supplier and in a way they’re both agreeing with each other about liking the real supplier (not the face of it) without even knowing it.

The majority of tech providers are doing some kind of ODM from a supplier, but the public-facing brand gets all the credit. Instead of the real supplier. R&D and ODM partnerships are a lot different from what most of the public thinks.

Having said that, Wyze has multiple times addressed that they are not a owned by any Chinese Company. Not even all their suppliers are Chinese ODMs.

Wyze is not a Chinese company, they are American owned and operated. They do indeed have some Chinese ODM suppliers for their physical products, but they customize their firmware AND run things through their servers in the US, and store data in the US. The same cannot be said for Chinese companies like Aosu. Wyze is not subject to Chinese law and the Chinese government cannot require them to give secret or backdoor access to Wyze servers. That is not to say that have never contracted with companies in other countries for various 3rd party services…like the majority of medium to large tech companies.

Wyze is no more a Chinese company than Apple, Dell, HP, Samsung, most cell phones, and half the Fortune 500 USA Tech companies that also do ODM manufacturing through Chinese suppliers. Having a hardware supplier out of China is not a security risk and does not make one a Chinese company. OEM and ODM supplying is the norm in the tech world. Pretty much everybody does it to some degree.

Even that click-bait article writer rando admitted there is no evidence any information was shared with 3rd parties.

Wyze has long been known in the past to contract with different 3rd parties for different things like using ThroughTek (a common company used for IoT authentication), but never to send them person info, just streaming authentication (my understanding is that Wyze has mostly switched to doing things through WebRTC now). Or using Braze or Segment for their analytics integration to figure what parts of their app are working or confusing to users, what they can improve, etc. They’ve been fairly open about a lot of that and they are not selling anyone’s private information or anything. Even in this article, the writer admits that Wyze did clarify that they were not giving out anyones’ personal information. Claims to the contrary would need to be presented with some kind of evidence, of which, there isn’t any.

Wyze does do business all over the globe and have admitted that in some cases they change the ā€œPingā€ from using the main search engine here (Google) to using Asia’s main search engine to gauge online probability. This is a common practice. But they will also have some IP address for various places depending on various factors. Users have seen US, Canadian, even EU IP addresses recently, one of the PM’s recently said that for their users in Asia, they usually try to use Asian IP addresses (especially for the ping). So there is some variation.

I’m unaware of any real evidence that Wyze gave info to the Chinese government. I know they use TUTK/ThroughTek (a Taiwanese company) commonly used for IoT solutions in the tech industry for connectivity, etc. Throughtek is also used by Amazon, Google, Sony, Microsoft, Samsung, and more because they are not a security threat. I believe this is where a lot of the misinfo or misunderstanding comes from though. ThroughTek owned IP addresses are fine…well…unless said person is ready to give up completely on Google, Amazon (including AWS and all the companies that use it…which even includes big names like Apple), Microsoft, etc. too.

Again, I don’t care if someone uses any Chinese company for their smart home. I even have some myself. I also support competition. I think it’s good for everyone. I am happy different people are happy with different options that fit their needs of what they were looking for. There are pros and cons with every choice. I have, and enjoy cameras from multiple brands. I admit I am a big fan of what Wyze stands for and the values they’ve decided to take upon themselves, but I am not blind to their issues and I criticize them where I feel it is warranted. I recently did so here in this post for example. I do try to make my criticism constructive. But yeah, despite not being an employee (nor having aspirations to ever be one), I have met all the founders/owners and top leadership in person. I like their vision. I like a lot of things that make them different from other companies including the core values they’ve adopted for themselves. I don’t hate other companies, but I believe Wyze has it in them to be great. I don’t think ANY group of humans is perfect, let alone individuals, but I LOVE what Wyze tries to do and the passion and out of the box thinking they have for many things and how they push for disruptive affordability, low profit margins, being friends with users, making great tech affordable to everyone and coming up with ways to improve on these things, and interesting hints some of the employees have said in public threads.

Anyway, No shade on you wanting to leave Wyze. I respect that different things fit people’s needs differently and am very glad there is a lot of competition. As I said, I also have cameras from multiple other companies, including Chinese ones, so I’m not against that either. Just calling a spade a spade as far as privacy concerns go. As for selling your devices, I’d recommend considering looking at doing it on eBay. Since Wyze has such low-profit margins (sometimes negative profit margins on some of their hardware like the OG cams), they often retain their value really well and often sell for close to the cost on there anyway. IF I was ever going to sell my Wyze stuff, I’d probably do it on eBay or another similar marketplace because they tend to sell reasonably high that way. But whatever you do is all good. Best of luck either way. :+1:

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Thanks @udon ,

Good luck with your next cam adventure.

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Haha cheers

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What kills me about all this is that Wyze could score major points by making ā€œlocal onlyā€ viewing a priority in their cameras.

They should bring back RTSP firmware - or even better, just include RTSP features in the regular firmware!

Lots of people (myself included) want the ability to use these cameras flexibly in a way which doesn’t require any public internet access at all. And it’s very difficult to have cloud-based security issues if your cameras aren’t connected to a cloud!

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Gillett sold razors, HP (et al) sell printers, Apple,Google,Amazon and many many more companies sell products for prices that are LESS than the cost to produce. They expect to sell you something else!

WYZE may not have ā€˜planned’ to initially but at some point their success was a wake up call and they realized they could not sustain operational cost without more income. Since their original business model was largely based on PRICE, another revenue stream was needed. What has developed is the result we see today. Having a semi-stable source of revenue makes lenders more comfortable…

B.

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Amcrest cameras and NVRs function totally without an internet connection. Newest cameras have person and face detection all on the cameras. You can use SD cards in the cameras or the Amcrest NVR all on you local network for storage and viewing. If you want cloud, they sell that too. Your choice.

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The IP camera market is saturated; they can only sell so many in a month and dwindling unless they come out with new models. Subscription is where the revenue is.

I don’t want to diminish your overall point which seems to be that if privacy is mission critical for whatever reason then any camera online has some level of risk but one remark stuck out to me that I wanted to qualify:

This is true in the United States as well. National Security Letters from the FBI could compel Wyze to provide all of your user data upon request at any time. A FISA warrant could then compel any recordings you have on Wyze servers. Both NSLs and FISA warrants require secrecy that would prohibit Wyze from informing you. So, strictly speaking, it’s not just China that has such an overbearing law.

Now, citizens and residents of the United States enjoy many other protections that would make it more difficult to punish you for any objectionable content they found but the truth remains that the FBI issues thousands of NSLs a year.

So I’m not sure this argument is a slam dunk in comparing privacy protections for Chinese vs US companies.

I think your stronger argument is that any video that gets uploaded to the web has the potential to be compromised (legally or not) and you have to be mindful that there is no such thing as perfect protection.

For example, I think there’s no camera with internet access that I’m aware of that would make me comfortable with having a camera in a private living space.

As to the overall point of this thread: Wyze has shown a very important improvement over the last security issue – timely disclosure and heightened transparency. There is no such thing as perfect security but how you respond to security issues matter.

So I find it a good sign that Wyze appears to have improved their security procedures by quickly disclosing the breach and the extent of the breach (though it make me wonder about their programming practices that this breach seems so similar to a past breach that should have been fixed).

Time will tell.

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Polling the forum in 2019 :slight_smile:

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You absolutely make good points. I don’t disagree. This is why you should never put cameras in privacy critical areas if you are concerned about privacy. There are certainly concerns both ways. Let’s analyze this a step further.

If you are regularly committing illegal acts within the USA, then having a US cloud company for your surveillance is probably a bad idea for you that could be used to investigate, prosecute, and convict you. On the other hand, you might not care as much if an adversarial government sees you committing crimes because they have no jurisdiction over you and they are unlikely to report you to your government when they have no incentive to help out their adversary. So, in that sense, using Chinese cloud cameras could be considered a [slightly] safer choice.

On the other hand, US government is not likely to use ā€œembarrassingā€ or ā€œprivacy sensitiveā€ material to blackmail you, while the Chinese government is more likely to have agents leverage this is some way, even for things not directly related to government concerns, such as if you work for a company they want you to steal secrets or information from. China and Chinese companies absolutely have a history of corporate warfare among other things. So there are risks there.

Honestly, this doesn’t need to be limited to cameras with internet access. People think PoE or closed-circuit local-only cameras are completely safe in privacy areas, but that is not accurate either. It has been demonstrated by researchers that anyone with $2K worth of equipment can access the footage of nearly ANY camera (even dashcams, PoE, phones cameras, etc) from a distance of up to 16 feet (depending on a few variables). More expensive equipment can do it even farther away because they just intercept the EM signal from the lens to the circuit board. So in that sense, anyone with a strong enough antenna, or in the apartment or house next to you can technically access your video before it even gets encrypted by the circuit board. They’ve been able to do the same thing with storage mediums for decades too, so technically they could intercept the data written to or from harddrives from a distance, but in the case of the camera lens, they can do it BEFORE it even reaches the circuit board, thus making it easier to decode early on.

So, I think in the end, we both agree to the overall point that there is no such thing as perfect security. If privacy is your main concern, then you have to take extra smart precautions of not putting things in privacy-sensitive areas.

My main point was that switching to a Chinese camera company doesn’t necessarily improve your privacy concerns (except maybe in a few specific edge use-cases related to hiding from the feds and not caring about adversarial govs).

And while there is good progress in how Wyze responded this time (more details disclosed and quicker proactive notification sent to let everyone know if they were affected or not, etc), there is always still room for progress.

Your comment made great points. :+1: Thanks for sharing/participating.

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::sigh::   Stuff like this makes me want to :fire: :frog: :fire:  

The urge passes but we’re all pretty singed.

I hear cooked Frog is nice a delicacy.

Give til it hurts. :face_with_head_bandage:

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Related to this CNET thing and AI content issues we’ve been discussing, I just saw an interesting article today just published from TomsHardware yesterday that identified a lot of the same things I noticed:

CNET has gotten so bad recently that even Wikipedia has moved CNET from a top-tier reputation to now be on their blacklist of untrustworthy sources. :rofl:

Key quotes related to this discussion:

AI-generated content and other unfavorable practices have put longtime staple CNET on Wikipedia’s blacklisted sources

Back in October 2020, the acquirement of CNET by publisher Red Ventures began pushing CNET down at Wikipedia since evidence seemed to indicate a drop in editorial standards and more advertiser-favored content.

Red Ventures’ ruthless pursuit of capital and posting of misinformation on other owned sites (like Healthline) has kept CNET off the current list of reliable sources.

the common denominator here, which is Red Ventures, and target the problem (a spam network) at its source

The issue here isn’t purely the concealed usage of generative AI in published articles on one of the most well-known tech news sites ever. Instead, it’s the fact that those AI-generated articles tend to be poorly written and inaccurate.

editors’ treatment of AI-generated content is remarkably consistent with their past policy: it is just spam, isn’t it?

With generative AI, you can’t even guarantee that the result will be accurate, especially if you already lack the expertise to tell the difference.

That last one is a key point here…Red Ventures bought CNET’s early REPUTATION so they could leverage their spam and rely on CNET’s audience now lacking sufficient details on things to the point they can’t tell the difference that their stories are inaccurate or just spammy nonsense. I only recognized it in this Wyze article because I am probably pretty close to being as much a Wyze expert as someone can be (ie: hence the Wyze ā€œMavenā€ thing). :joy: Red Ventures only cares about clickbait and don’t have editorial standards anymore. All things that were easily apparent from a cursory read of their take on this issue and messing up a bunch of facts. It all makes a lot of sense now. Honestly, I had no idea CNET was acquired and I assumed they were still a top-tier source. Had they not messed up their Wyze article so bad with such weird statements I probably would’ve never even realized something was off about them lately because I haven’t really paid close attention to their acquisition and switching to AI content.

It’s interesting that Wikipedia demoted CNET from it’s list of Trusted sources to it’s blacklist of UNTRUSTED and unreliable sources now.

Apparently there are leaked messages from Red Ventures’ Executives indicating they are not concerned about the quality (something opposite from the old CNET), but are panicking that their SEO, advertising and commissions will be affected now if Google and others reduce the algorithms for detected AI content. :joy: So instead of finding a way to fix their quality, the executives conclude they should do better at HIDING disclosure of their AI content and never label anything. Wow.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I LOVE AI, and I use it every day. I am even going to self-host my own local AI at home. I really love AI. But AI should be used to HELP and as a tool, not as spam.Red Ventures is bragging that they can crank out dirt cheap click bait for less than a penny for 750 words and this practice is generating millions of dollars in revenue, particularly from suckers who don’t realize that in many cases, nobody at the company has even reviewed/edited or even read the article. They just want your clicks at all costs and are capitalizing off CNET’s prior reputation of quality when people don’t realize it no longer applies.

That’s just insane. I probably would’ve never realized it was that bad until I saw the red flags in their Wyze article…something on which I am quite informed and knowledgeable about. Just Wow. The old CNET is dead. Sad day.

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I love the new AI on my new Samsung S24. I can now summarize @carverofchoice 's long dissertations:

AI can be used for good. AI summarized lengthy message to one screen. Love it.

===

Wyze users face service outage, company advises against app deletion or device reinstallation

• Wyze users reported issues with device connection and login difficulties on February 16, 2024.

• The company acknowledged the outage and is working to resolve the problem.

• Wyze advises users not to delete or reinstall the app or devices as it may cause additional issues.

• The outage is affecting some users and devices, and the company is providing updates on the status.

• Wyze emphasizes that user privacy is a priority and encourages users to be informed about potential risks when using devices from Chinese companies.

(Need to verify if it worked.)

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I’ve had several problems with the devices and most of the time they were resolved. I now have a way safe that unable to be disconnected from my account. Therefore, I cannot sell it and I have no longer a use for it. Like throw it overboard as a boat anchor not quite sure. I spent over 3 hours on chat and phone support their final solution, Will give you a $10 credit! Completely insulting. I supported this company from the beginning because I believed in them. I believed in the founders very disappointed with all of their vacuum cleaners and such. Yes, the Waze gun safe is one of the extras but to not be able to transfer it is absolutely appalling.

And yes I did tell them I was going to be writing negative reviews everywhere I can about Wyze and this is just the beginning.

Ed-G

I think you forgot one item.

• in an attempt to quickly get a handle on the outage, Wyze modified the server software and inadvertently introduced a few more bugs; corrupting the database and short-circuiting sections of the UI.

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Maybe I need an update. Thanks.