Insecam exposes live feeds of surveillance cameras

A NEW website has exposed the live feeds of surveillance cameras around the world, giving an intimate view into shops, offices and bedrooms.

HERE’S lookin’ at you kid.

A new website has exposed live feeds of surveillance cameras from throughout the world, providing an intimate view into cafes, shops, malls and even bedrooms.

The site, insecam.com, provides links to more than 73,000 cameras from CCTV, webcams and DVRs from throughout the world.

A shop north of Hollywood.

A total of 924 Australian cameras are exposed, along with more than 11,000 from the US.

Each page publishes the live vision, manufacturer and password of each camera, as well as the exact postcode, latitude and longitude and Google Maps location of the device.

The site says it has been able to link to the live feeds because camera owners have failed to change their default passwords, such as “admin”.

An empty bedroom in California.

Insecam claims to have been designed to “show the importance of the security settings”, but the ads for cameras and security systems littered throughout the site suggest to a more commercial motive.

“To remove your public camera from this site and make it private the only thing you need to do is to change your camera password,” the site says.

A living room in Nebraska.

A US lawyer experienced in hacking cases, Jay Leiderman, told US technology site Motherboard that the site is “a stunningly clear violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act”, but the site maintains that its purpose is altruistic.

“Only [the website] can prove the scale of the problem,” the site’s anonymous administrator told Motherboard. “This problem was in darkness for many years.”

The administrator said an automated process picked up thousands of camera feeds each week, and that no one had yet asked for their camera to be removed from the site.

A (messy) lounge room in California.