Hello I had a camera stolen from outside my shop V3 Indoor/outdoor it looks like the camera thieve has reset the camera and added it to there account causing it to be completely removed from my account and is no longer showing in my account and no way to access the cloud storage to see who took it. Please advise
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Apparently, a case of a camera not being mounted high enough and out of reach. Except for doorbell cams, all of my outdoor cams can only be reached using a ladder. Excuse my assumption that your cam was not out of reach. Consider it permanently lost. No recovery possible, especially if you are looking for Wyze assistance.
So the conclusion to this is, that if somebody goes in your garage and you have a camera in there, and they tear the camera down, steal everything in your garage and then take the camera hit the set up button add it to their account. It automatically removes it from your account, including all of the cloud data. I would think you would be able to access your cloud data to see who broke into your garage since they took the camera and removed it from your account by adding it to their account. This is a serious issue.
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You might consider a Wyze Outdoor camera. The Outdoor camera can not be added to another account unless you delete the camera and base station from your account.
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That’s weird. I could’ve sworn that a camera that is setup under your account can’t be activated anywhere else as long as you don’t manually delete it off your account’s home tab. This is the first time I remember hearing someone say it deleted automatically when someone else setup the camera under a different account.
In the past we used to tell people not to delete a stolen camera from their account to make sure it was useless to the thief. I wonder when that changed.
Maybe I’ll see if any @Mavens are willing to test replication of this by trying to install an already setup camera on one of their secondary accounts and see if their secondary account can now “steal” the camera off their primary account.
If nobody beats me to it, I may test this out myself later. The beginning of the week is just usually really busy for me with work, but I might try this later in the week. It would be good confirm.
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That’s only for the Outdoor cams.
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Outdoor cams are able to be deleted once they’re stolen though. They are setup in a way that if you delete them from your account while they are offline, it permanently bricks the camera forever. Nobody can restore it, not even the original account owner or Wyze support. So there is no need to keep it on your account if it gets stolen, it’s already bricked/locked.
But for some reason I thought wired cams would be locked as long as they were still setup on another person’s account.
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Here is info from SlabSlayer.
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Weird, they should at least lock cameras onto an account until they’ve been deleted from that account, at the very least so someone can view cloud events of who stole their camera.
#AMA2ASK
(asking 10/25/24)
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That would be nice.
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I tested this a few months ago because I thought that could be a potential security issue if the camera was bound to 2 accounts at the same time. But no it just deletes it from the original account.
You are right that it would make more sense to prevent setup, though that could lead to the issues if someone looses access to their account or sells their camera and forgets to delete it
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Did you report it to local police if so I’m sure they can get a court order for the camera serial number and name with address of who has it now.
If they want to go though that amount of trouble and Wyze keeps those records.
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That would be great. Though in my experience, the departments I have dealt with would tell me that the value of what was stolen is too low and would only be minor misdemeanor at best, assuming the person who has it now is the thief instead of some innocent person they sold it to anonymously. Mine would gladly take a report, but not do anything unless there was a huge pattern involving lots of other victims and lots of property and they thought the camera could help them solve a bigger case.
Can’t hurt to try though. You might save someone else from getting robbed.
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So let me get this straight. If someone steels my camera and sets it up under their account, I can’t access cloud recordings? What’s the point of paying for cloud then? This is a major issue IMHO!
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Just bought a v3 at Home Depot yesterday for less than $19.00 plus tax
Remember the thief may come back and steal your new camera if you mount it in the same location.
Just went to Home Depot’s web site and they are about $30.00.
The one I bought must have been on sale.
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Is the playback button greyed-out?
If works, that is a good price.
The biggest issue here is that we all pay for cloud services, but if that camera is removed from your account, it also removes all of the cloud data/recordings and everything associated with that camera which is pure BS. The cloud recordings should at least remain for the 14 day. Period That it’s advertised. And it’s totally ridiculous that someone can steal your camera put it under their account and it removes it from your account. They should be blinded by Mac address or a UDID from the camera.
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It can and it does!
Blink has this feature and I bought one off of eBay for rodent monitoring ( inspired by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9_5rp0g6Ro ) and received a camera that I couldn’t activate.
Seller very apologetic and gave quick refund. Now I have a nice dummy cam to sit around the house and make people nervous.
After that, I asked every seller before buying, and sure enough, some did not know about this feature and promptly cancelled their listings.
I didn’t know Wyze battery cams worked this way, but I think it’s a good idea. And if @carverofchoice doesn’t beat me to it, I’ll test that thing about also stealing the cloud events when you steal the cam.
This has been an informative, if troubling thread…
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EXPLETIVE! EXPLETIVE! EXPLETIVE! and one more EXPLETIVE! for good measure.
I just tested this and that is exactly the case.
Method:
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Test V3 is on main account with Cam Unlimited and has numerous event clips recorded and accessible. It is set up filming an analog desk clock to provide a unique steady stream of events.
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Walk over to cam and press reset button until hear “Ready to Connect” and follow the steps to connect it to a secondary Wyze account with Cam Plus Lite
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Setup completes, I decline 30 day trial of Cam Plus and camera begins functioning as expected and recording 12 sec clips with cool down etc.
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I can see the SD card footage but not any cloud event clips saved on the other account.
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All cloud event clips for this cam have now apparently completely vanished from the main Wyze account with Cam Unlimited.
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Reverse step 2 - reconnect cam to main account
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All cloud event clips for this cam ( both before and after the “theft” ) are now viewable again.
So we definitely have a serious problem. Steal the camera and set it up as your own to get not only a camera, SD card, and the events on the SD card, but also to deny all event footage to the original owner.
Thereby completely defeating the purpose of cloud recording in a single stroke.
But the path to safety looks simple - the footage has not been deleted, the original owner just can no longer see it because the MAC address is no longer active on their account. So just fix that.
(I don’t believe naming has anything to do with it because I rename and move cameras often and the clips follow the camera regardless of what is is called)
If any @Mavens can verify all this, or contradict it, or raise the issue with Wyze through the appropriate channels, I would greatly appreciate it! 
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I just did an experiment that seems to indicate that the footage has not yet been deleted, it is just inaccessible and you can recover it…
if you can recover and reconnect the cam to your account before the two weeks are up and the footage is really deleted (obviously unrealistic)
~OR~ convince Wyze to do an override and re-add that MAC address to your account. Or something like that. They should have God Mode powers over such things.
This idea is a complete wild a guess, but if I were in your shoes, I would be energized enough to try asking Wyze before the perps come back for the rest of your shop contents…
Agreed! Mount the cam sturdily and lock up your brooms, rakes and shovels so there are no handy flyswatters for an impetuous miscreant to use to send your cameras flying across the yard…
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