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CCTV cameras are streaming footage of Singapore homes to this creepy site

A screengrab taken from website Insecam, which streams CCTV footages from devices placed in 256 countries. (Screen grab from Insecam)

Do you have a CCTV camera in your home?

If you do, we hope you’ve changed the default password. If you haven’t, you might be able to see streamed footage of your home on a website called Insecam.

The website streams CCTV footage from homes and shopping centres at various countries across the globe, including Singapore and Malaysia.

There are a total of 73,011 streams from 256 countries that can be viewed on the site, out of which 785 are from Singapore and over 11,000 are from the US.

Screen grab of a CCTV footage from Insecam website. (Insecam screen grab)
Screen grab of a CCTV footage from Insecam website. (Insecam screen grab)

When Yahoo Singapore accessed the site on Monday 5pm, none of the videos were loading.

However, the site claimed that they did not hack into the CCTV cameras because the owners had not changed the default passwords.

“Sometimes administrator (possibly you too) forget to change the default passwords like ‘admin: admin’ or ‘admin: 12345’ on security surveillance system, online camera or DVR. Such online cameras are available for all Internet users,” said the site.

A screengrab from website Insecam on how to search for CCTV camera footages on the Internet. (Insecam screengrab)
A screengrab from website Insecam on how to search for CCTV camera footages on the Internet. (Insecam screengrab)

Why have they set up such a website?

According to Insecam, it’s for a good cause.

“This site has been designed in order to show the importance of the security settings. 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,” they said.

The site, which is being hosted under the GoDaddy domain with a Moscow IP Location, also benefits from the online advertisements it runs.

It was earlier reported by news site Motherboard on 31 October.

Yahoo Singapore has contacted Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore to ask for a comment on privacy concerns.