A reader tipped me off to this Reddit thread where Wyze has had some sort of issue has broadcasted private camera streams randomly to others. That’s one hell of a privacy issue. But not the company’s first one. I wrote about another privacy issue with Wyze back in 2019. Thus I am not shocked by this. The Verge confirms that this was happening on Friday along with additional Reddit threads illustrating that this issue was widely seen by uses, and they also report the following:
After we published this story, Wyze spokesperson Dave Crosby shared a statement explaining what happened. Although Crosby says the issue is resolved and that view.wyze.com is “back up and running,” the status page still says view.wyze.com is under maintenance as of Saturday morning. (Crosby says the company will update the status page “shortly.”)
Here is Crosby’s statement:
This was a web caching issue and is now resolved. For about 30 minutes this afternoon, a small number of users who used a web browser to log in to their camera on view.wyze.com may have seen cameras of other users who also may have logged in through view.wyze.com during that time frame. The issue DID NOT affect the Wyze app or users that did not log in to view.wyze.com during that time period.
Once we identified the issue we shut down view.wyze.com for about an hour to investigate and fix the issue.
This experience does not reflect our commitment to users or the investments we’ve made over the last few years to enhance security. We are continuing to investigate this issue and will make efforts to ensure it doesn’t happen again. We’re also working to identify affected users.
That’s nice. But again, I’ll point out that this is not the first time that Wyze has run into a privacy issue. Besides what I mentioned above, there was this:
In March 2022, Wyze revealed that it had been aware of a security vulnerability for three years that could have let bad actors access WyzeCam v1 cameras, but quietly discontinued the camera rather than telling customers about it.
My take home message is that nobody should buy Wyze cameras. They may be cheap on Amazon. But they’re clearly insecure and the company cannot be trusted.
Wyze Seems To Have A Privacy Issue Related To Their Cameras
Posted in Commentary with tags Privacy, Wyze on September 9, 2023 by itnerdA reader tipped me off to this Reddit thread where Wyze has had some sort of issue has broadcasted private camera streams randomly to others. That’s one hell of a privacy issue. But not the company’s first one. I wrote about another privacy issue with Wyze back in 2019. Thus I am not shocked by this. The Verge confirms that this was happening on Friday along with additional Reddit threads illustrating that this issue was widely seen by uses, and they also report the following:
After we published this story, Wyze spokesperson Dave Crosby shared a statement explaining what happened. Although Crosby says the issue is resolved and that view.wyze.com is “back up and running,” the status page still says view.wyze.com is under maintenance as of Saturday morning. (Crosby says the company will update the status page “shortly.”)
Here is Crosby’s statement:
This was a web caching issue and is now resolved. For about 30 minutes this afternoon, a small number of users who used a web browser to log in to their camera on view.wyze.com may have seen cameras of other users who also may have logged in through view.wyze.com during that time frame. The issue DID NOT affect the Wyze app or users that did not log in to view.wyze.com during that time period.
Once we identified the issue we shut down view.wyze.com for about an hour to investigate and fix the issue.
This experience does not reflect our commitment to users or the investments we’ve made over the last few years to enhance security. We are continuing to investigate this issue and will make efforts to ensure it doesn’t happen again. We’re also working to identify affected users.
That’s nice. But again, I’ll point out that this is not the first time that Wyze has run into a privacy issue. Besides what I mentioned above, there was this:
In March 2022, Wyze revealed that it had been aware of a security vulnerability for three years that could have let bad actors access WyzeCam v1 cameras, but quietly discontinued the camera rather than telling customers about it.
My take home message is that nobody should buy Wyze cameras. They may be cheap on Amazon. But they’re clearly insecure and the company cannot be trusted.
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