Treat your cameras like a front porch light: visible and obvious.
Cloud storage is convenient, but it creates a honeypot. Hackers don’t break into your house; they break into the cloud provider. If you use cloud recording, use unique, strong passwords and mandatory two-factor authentication (2FA). Do not reuse passwords from other sites. Treat your cameras like a front porch light:
Legal doctrine in the U.S. (following Katz v. United States, 1967) protects areas where a person has a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Inside one’s home is clear. But what about a backyard visible from a neighbor’s second-floor camera? Or a living room window facing the street? Cameras with zoom or thermal imaging can blur these lines. Moreover, continuous recording captures non-consenting individuals—delivery drivers, guests, or people walking dogs—whose data may be stored indefinitely. If you use cloud recording, use unique, strong