There are many reasons to manage your security system on your own. Privacy stands out as a primary concern, along with advantages like long term cost savings and avoiding vendor lock-in.
It is commonly known today that when using various software and services, there is a trade off between privacy and convenience. While this is true in most cases, the goal of StreamShuttle is to close that gap. We set out to build the most convenient and simple to use security software that also fully protects your privacy.
One of the biggest concerns with the other solutions from the megacorps is unfortunately a fundamental part of how they work. They transmit recorded events to central servers which are accessible by the companies and their employees. Maybe you trust the megacorps (you know who) or unknown 3rd party sellers on online marketplaces (you know where) to not do anything nefarious with this footage, but do you trust all of their employees? Are you sure that these companies cannot be subpoenaed and compelled to hand over your private footage?
Many camera companies outside the few big names that provide “cloud services” are even worse. In many cases these companies are not American and while viewing your footage, the connection goes through servers outside of the U.S., something most consumers are unaware of. When security and privacy are a priority, this just does not make sense! If you can't trust the big guys with big budgets to keep you data secure, how can you trust a no name 3rd party to do better?
If security is your prime concern, then you should be wary of using any type of camera which only uploads events when “activity” is detected. There is no way to guarantee these cameras will capture 100 percent of all events of interest. There are so many variables at play, and each cameras does this type of detection differently. Anyone who has used one of these cameras can tell you about missed activity or false alarms. The only way be sure you get everything of interest is to record everything. Many of these cloud services can’t really even provide 24/7 recording because of many ISP upload bandwidth limitations. It maybe be possible to have one lower resolution camera streaming 24/7, but with each camera you add this starts to become less and less practical.
Unfortunately, companies go out of business or just stop supplying security updates to cameras for a multitude of reasons. This leaves them open to being hacked as new vulnerabilities are no longer being patched. Even worse, some of these cameras have been found to have backdoors!
It's best to prevent all cameras from accessing the internet at all. All outgoing connections should be blocked by some type of firewall for true peace of mind.
Another problem with the centralized cloud services is cost. The big companies like to charge for these services monthly, keeping you on the hook indefinitely, while also requiring you to purchase their hardware. There really is no reason for this. Although storing footage isn't free, their fees are generally way out of line with the true storage costs. In most cases, they force you to upgrade to hefty plans in order to have a reasonable retention time. You want to at least be able to go on vacation for a week without worrying about missing potential activity! Furthermore, it's difficult to find any of these cloud based services that even allow you to directly store the footage locally or somewhere you can control.
Vendor lock in is another huge issue with many of the larger brands. Most of the time they force you use their hardware, and if you decide you no longer want to pay for the service, the cameras will be completely useless! It's not just having to worry about no longer needing the service. What if the company closes, they change some policy, or worse force you to move to an entirely new ecosystem with less features than before?
One example is what nest / google did to it's customers by sun-setting their app after it was bought out.