[lloydatkinson]

This is a very disturbing trend for sure. Given that these new cameras that need accounts sure aren’t showing ads on the feeds either, meanwhile an account being required must be important to the manufacturers in some way.

I can only conclude that they must be selling access to feeds, because even the most incompetent agile product delivery manager type person isn’t going to simply suggest every camera needs an account along with all the extra engineering requirements involved for that for simply no reason - there surely must be a financial motive.

Furthermore what good is the feed if they can’t also sell the associated metadata, such as the account holders details, nearby WiFi access points, the list of devices on the network.

This is yet another angle they can use to try track every aspect of a home including the infamous example of Samsung “analysing” what type of content you’re watching and selling that to ad companies.

OP is probably better off looking at enterprise/industrial manufacturers.

[michaelt]

> I can only conclude that they must be selling access to feeds, because even the most incompetent agile product delivery manager type person isn’t going to simply suggest every camera needs an account along with all the extra engineering requirements involved for that for simply no reason - there surely must be a financial motive.

Eh, probably they're just targeting users who want to view their CCTV on their phone when away from home, without their camera ending up visible to the whole world.

I mean, if you're selling a retail product to consumers, very few of them know WTF things like ONVIF are.

[ramesh31]

This is happening with routers, too. Just recently had someone give me a new Netgear Nighthawk for free, and I was stoked until it wanted me to download an app and create an account to manage my network. Straight to the garbage.

[perrylaj]

Decent consumer hardware, in the future I'd suggest trying out something like OpenWRT rather than binning it.

https://openwrt.org/toh/netgear/r7000

[ramesh31]

Yeah I didn't realize they could be flashed with OpenWRT. Might give that shot.

[dangus]

Were you using the phone app-based installation, or visiting the local network address from a desktop computer?

Most products like this have some kind of "harder way" to set up without an account, while the smartphone way uses an account. For a router usually means that if you want the old-fashioned manual way you need to visit the router's gateway IP and set it up from there.

Sometimes "the smartphone way" even has a way around having to make an account, it's just that it's hard to find or discouraged. E.g., I set up my HP printer without an account or any ink subscriptions (and I even think it's a great printer, shocking, I know).

(I had a Nighthawk device relatively recently and it had no need for an account, but I don't actually know if this has changed recently)

[yumraj]

Effing Xfinity cable modem wants an app for a couple of things including service activation and such, via bluetooth access. I don't think there's a way around that.

Once that is done you can use the browser for a few things, but for WiFi password and all I think app is still needed. Couldn't find a way to do it other way.

Worst thing is that this stupid Xfinity app eats phone battery like crazy. So I had to disable background activity and bluetooth permissions once I was done with the activation and initial setup.

[sliken]

The way around that is to use your own cable modem. It's also way cheaper to buy than pay the monthly rental fee.

[bell-cot]

"Oh, you want fixed IP #'s? Sorry, we only support that via our $240-per-year-forever rented cablemodems."

- my most recent Comcast/Xfinity experience

[kevin_thibedeau]

Plus you don't have bandwidth lost to the Xfinity wifi.

[tapper]

Well that was a dumb thing to do! You could of flashed it with OpenWrt and had a dam good router.

[drdaeman]

> Given that these new cameras that need accounts sure aren’t showing ads on the feeds either

You haven't noticed many of the companion apps for IoT(of Shit) have those "store"/"discover'/"savvy user center" sections where they try their best to get you to buy more of their devices? Plus a barrage of notifications, in-app banners or emails how you're eligible for a "discount" or "promo"?

This - plus online services (re-broadcasting outside of home network, recording storage, face/object/sound recognition and notifications, etc - any software features that can be pay-gated, especially those that can't be done on-device because the device is ultra-cheap) is how they make money.

> I can only conclude that they must be selling access to feeds

I'm skeptical. Who's the buyer and what are they going to do with those feeds to make them useful? And if it's for something remotely legal - how they're going to untaint this data?

This works in cyberpunk novels - cameras sweeping data, AIs detecting that a neighborhood is $brand turf, classifying all the individuals, ..., massive profit! But reality is messier and way less logical than any fiction (and we don't have any AIs yet, while fiction has them abundant and dirt-cheap). Out of curiosity, I've just had a long session with GPT-4 (which is a really uneconomical way to do advertising, but maybe in 5-10 years?), telling it all I see in my room in extreme detail, down to all the scuff marks and pet hairs. It wasn't exactly bad - it managed to realize the obvious (which is much cheaper to deduce from my search and purchase history, huh), but let's say I haven't made any new records on my purchase list.

[red-iron-pine]

> You haven't noticed many of the companion apps for IoT(of Shit)

coulda just gone with Internet of Turds (IoT)

[pc86]

I agree that they are very likely selling all this data, but let's not underestimate the incompetence of product people.