IP Crawl: Living atlas of open webcams discovered on the public internet

https://ipcrawl.com/

by arm32 • 25 days ago

335 179 25 days ago

ipcrawl.com

Ako03• 1 month ago

Is it legal to have such a website?

arm32• 1 month ago

https://ipcrawl.com/about

marysol511• 24 days ago

Depends on jurisdiction, but as these are "public", there's reasonable defence in a court that you're not committing an offence.

Like trespass, requires intent. When a car-park is private land, it's inferred that the public has access.

dbmikus• 25 days ago

Really freaky seeing how many of these are bedrooms.

himata4113• 25 days ago

So that's where all of that footage came from on **** leak. I mean I knew it was bad, but there's just so many and it is 2026.

nik2820007• 25 days ago

Lazy manufactures and ignorant users are responsible for the majority of this nonsense.

fuzzfactor2• 25 days ago

Some people just want to use an app to see what their pets are doing when they are not home.

Without realizing that the entire world can see what the owners are doing when they are at home. Without using any special app at all.

elliotbnvl• 25 days ago

Definitely an invasion of privacy. I can’t visit this website in good faith. It should be taken down.

The point is valuable, and the mission is important, but the ends do not justify the means. If this must be shared, at least use static pictures and don’t stream the content for viewers.

nik2820007• 25 days ago

Yes and no? The owners of these devices made them publicly available by design or through ignorance. While they should be notified of their (maybe) mistake, it's no different from a person who doesn't understand that their neighbours can see into an open window at night.

Should Shodan be taken down because it can search for these devices? What about Google because it can find admin consoles?

gblargg• 25 days ago

The site even lets you see if any of your cameras are exposed, where it switches to a map view and shows any near you.

IanCal3• 25 days ago

it's no different from a person who doesn't understand that their neighbours can see into an open window at night.

And standing out in the street staring through with binoculars is still wrong and creepy.

Should Shodan be taken down because it can search for these devices? What about Google because it can find admin consoles?

It’s not a new idea, nor that controversial, that we restrict things specifically aimed at doing something rather than ones just capable of it.

pibaker3• 25 days ago

There is a difference between you taking a look through your neighbor's window, and compiling a list of houses known to have curtains open in your city and publishing the list to the public.

What about Google because it can find admin consoles?

Intention and proportion matters. Google is overwhelmingly not used for discovering unsecured endpoints and that is what makes it OK. If you build a search engine that only serves admin consoles and markets itself as the search engine for admin consoles then you have a problem. There is a reason why DDOS for hire services market themselves as selling "stress testing for your own servers," because they are smart enough to know the consequences of knowingly breaking the law.

mannanj• 25 days ago

Do you feel this is true for government agencies too?

eszed• 25 days ago

Hell, yes. (Not GP.)

nik2820007• 25 days ago

If I set up a camera in my money laundering room and put it online, I would not fault a government from using it against me. If they bruteforced a password or used some undisclosed zeroday then I might take issue.

Mistletoe2• 25 days ago

I think the website is kind of awesome. If you put a window in your home and opened it to the world is it wrong to look through the window? If someone installed the camera and didn’t understand what they are doing that is on them.

IanCal3• 25 days ago

If you’re aware the person wouldn’t want you to do that, yes it’s wrong. Being able to do something is not the same as it being right to do something.

imglorp• 25 days ago

It's not the site's fault.

These things are open server ports on the wild internet. Anyone with a "for" loop can find them easily. If they care about privacy they shouldn't have them public.

mike_hock• 25 days ago

No, the world's job is not to make itself safe for you if you don't give a crap.

If you roll your eyes at the thought of having to manage credentials or refuse to learn how the internet works on a basic level, you're not fit to set up devices connected to the internet.

Secure your shit or don't play with technology you can't handle.

TZubiri• 25 days ago

"Your honour I just scanned a list of all devices in the planet and filtered those that looked like cameras and made a website such that even more people can access it even more easily."

I get it if you think this is a legal gray area (it's not), but it's surprising to see how many people seem to think this is plain justified. Makes me think that there's some users that gravitate towards this site because the hacker in hackernews refers to hacking as in accessing systems without permission.

If you think hosting a website like this is ok, I encourage you to talk to a criminal lawyer and consider if you are a criminal. At least do it knowingly, do not pretend shit like this is fine.

ragebol• 25 days ago

Someone keeping an eye on their (illegal?) cannabis pants in the UK? https://ipcrawl.com/?cam=3892f36f150ff9db

specproc• 25 days ago

I know Droitwich, this made me laugh

Reason077• 25 days ago

Droitwich is famous for its 213m Long Wave radio transmission towers. Once the tallest structures in the country and now set to be decommissioned as the BBC shuts down its Long Wave service after 90+ years:

https://hackaday.com/2026/06/27/requiem-for-long-wave-as-the...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74yn7v7k4qo

bensons1• 25 days ago

Nothing changed compared to 2012 https://web.archive.org/web/20151013010243/http://internetce...

As a rule of thumb, if you believe that "nobody would connect that to the Internet, really nobody", there are at least 1000 people who did.

nik2820007• 25 days ago

So many SCADA terminals and HMIs just hangin out on the internet.

preisschild• 25 days ago

Connect it but make sure authorization is actually secure

halperter• 25 days ago

This website---naturally, I think---weirds me out. Many of these cameras are in private spaces, with some places you most certainly don't want people to have live feeds of. It's quite disturbing how you can see personal snapshots of people's lives without them knowing. There's a perverse feeling of dread about being able to see into someone's life and being able to paradoxically watch someone eat dinner alone, seemingly so detatched from human connection even with someone watching like some kind of otherworldly spectator.

nik2820007• 25 days ago

If the room has an IP camera in it, it is by definition not private. Since cheap cameras have begun to appear everywhere I treat them all as if they were publicly viewable. I'm not going to hide from them, but I save my more thorough ear cleanings and ass scratchings for home.

AlecSchueler• 25 days ago

If the room has an IP camera in it, it is by definition not private.

While right, there are multiple definitions of "private" and for others OP's point still stands.

jubilanti2• 25 days ago

If the room has an IP camera in it, it is by definition not private.

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

So if I put an IP camera inside your bedroom without your notice or consent, and hook that up to the Internet, you'd be okay with that? Because it's public!

A lot of these are probably from default or misconfigurations. A lot of these people with IP cam feeds visible to the Internet probably do not know they are open.

rolph• 25 days ago

possibilities exist.

a] they may be exhibitionists

b] they dont realise they are misconfigured

c] someone hacked them to whatever end

d] they are doing nothing wrong thus believe they have nothing to hide.

fhdkweig• 25 days ago

Or they don't even know the camera is there. I've heard of landlords doing that in tenant's private spaces, including bathrooms. When caught, they like to claim they are just keeping an eye on the property, but everyone knows they are just perverts.

ryandrake3• 25 days ago

Every consumer tech company I’ve worked for had at least one guy who was a PM or a PM like role, who would say things like “InfoSec UX is confusing! Users don’t want to deal with IP addresses and firewalls and passwords and keys. We need to make the product easier to share by default!” This scenario seems to be what happens when anyone actually listens to That Guy.

Sharing on the internet should be one of the hardest things to do in your product. You need to make enough friction that the user can never do it by accident or by default. And the user should be warned at every step.

mmooss5• 25 days ago

The answer is to make sharing secure, easy, and with informed consent. The answer is not to impose IP addresses, NAT routing, keys, etc. so that only technical people can give their consent.

tristor• 25 days ago

Granted, I only have worked in B2B and never B2C, but as a technical PM, I care VERY much about security and am often the primary SME for several aspects of security (I was an engineer with a background in security for more than a decade before becoming a PM). Saying "Users don't want to deal with that and it should be easy" is not the same thing as "open a gaping security hole", the fact you are conflating them indicates either the people you're referring to or you yourself lack creativity.

marysol511• 24 days ago

People do want simplicity though. Plug in the device, be able to access it.

So you either host some infrastructure it calls back into, so you get around things like NAT. Or you punch holes in the network.

The same users who want simplicity don't want the complexity of having to remember passwords either...

Jordan-117• 25 days ago

I wonder how plausible it would be to deduce where a given webcam is (some combination of IP data, context clues, visible landmarks, maybe face searching) and then contact the owner to let them know. There used to be this fun site called where-is-this.com where people could share images of public places for others to try to track down; it would be nice to harness something like that for good.

650REDHAIR• 25 days ago

I feel like I’ve read about three letter agencies using the humming of power lines to geo-locate where a video/audio was recorded.

“Electrical Network Frequency (ENF) analysis”.

I’m going to dig more and will leave some links when I get back to a computer.

dorgo• 24 days ago

images of public places for others to try to track down

isn't this handled by AI nowdays? In my experiments (some time ago) AI was extremly good at it.

marysol511• 24 days ago

At least one of them seems to be in an office, and the office has it's own netblock.

pedromlsreis• 25 days ago

I think this kind of websites show you the humanity true colours, we don't usually think about that.

jodrellblank• 23 days ago

What weirds me out is how empty it is of humans. These are some, but mostly empty rooms, empty roads, parked cars, empty gardens, empty warehouses, empty shops, empty chairs... page after page even of places like Mexico City or Berlin Germany where there are many millions of people.

You'd be forgiven for thinking this was the 'after' footage of an end-of-the-orld movie where all the humans have been disappeared, Mary Celeste style.

davidvaughan• 25 days ago

Droitwich, UK, is a bit revealing.

nemothekid• 25 days ago

Off topic: Is there anyone doing any research on how to use Claude/Agents to design websites that don't look so, "Claude"?

nik2820007• 25 days ago

You should ask Claude and see how many kWh and gallons it can use up to hallucinate an answer.

cwillu• 25 days ago

Assuming a stack of H100's is required for the size of the model, about 66 kilojoules. It's okay, I'll offset it by eating a cold sandwich tonight instead of boiling water for spaghetti, and then I'll be good for a dozen such conversations.

alexpotato• 25 days ago

People always say that LLMs design websites/write text/produce code that is the same.

I don't really understand this b/c it's trivial to say "write me a letter in the style of <famous letter writer A> mixed with the style of "<famous letter writer B>"

"Here are some examples websites, make a new website that is a remix of all of the example sites".

You would be surprised at the results.

morkalork• 25 days ago

Maybe ask Claude how to keep the site up before doing a redesign of the UI...

andrewstuart2• 25 days ago

“Give 20 different designs all must be distinct unique and not look averaged like a typical LLM site”

Lord_Zero• 25 days ago

"make no mistakes"

chickensong• 25 days ago

No research needed, just use the tool differently.

djeastm2• 25 days ago

I don't think it needs research the person developing just has to care what the website looks like. A lot of people just want functionality. But there are also pre-made front-end skills that do a lot of that front-end "taste" legwork for you (still obviously pre-made, but not in the default Claude look)

johnmkane• 25 days ago

I feel like a small group of Geo Guesser pros could organize a nice competition for them selves and at the same time make a big service to lots of people.

realty_geek• 25 days ago

Seems a bit shifty to be honest...

What is the goal?

And they've created a reddit page specifically for this!

QuantumNomad_2• 25 days ago

Hehe, this one has a feeding tray with a novelty sign on it:

Baiting deer is illegal!
This corn pile is intended for squirrels, chipmunks, and other such critters.
Any deer found eating this corn will be shot!

https://ipcrawl.com/fun/c/373ef0178c5281a5

dotancohen3• 25 days ago

That is clever! If the guy does get caught hunting deer in that immediate area, I wonder if this could be used against him.

bondolo• 25 days ago

For several decades relatives of mine always swept out their trucks after transporting cattle salt blocks or alfalfa bales on the same quiet narrow S shaped section of roadway in the bush about a mile from the house at the back of the property. Amazing how almost every year someone managed to shoot a deer there in the fall.

3abiton• 25 days ago

No wonder why deers are seen as snobbish. All the illiterate ones were shot.

andrewstuart2• 25 days ago

Imagine if someone put plausible but strange/shocking fake videos on an open port for the voyeurs to think real and freak out about.

firecall3• 25 days ago

https://ipcrawl.com/?page=6&cam=63f7feaf5042d223

bewal416• 25 days ago

All these “is this ethical” comments remind of similar discussions happening in the IMG_0416 articles, about YouTube video that were most likely not meant to be scene publicly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42102506

jrochkind1• 25 days ago

What, no plotting on a map?

applicative• 25 days ago

I thought it all had to be fake but, thinking it would be innocent, did watch what seems to have been the priests’s concluding procession for 430 Saturday vigil at St Martin of Tours in Louisville which I had to labor a bit to identify At first I thought ‘who goes to church Saturday afternoon’ - and not a bad crowd for Louisville on a Saturday afternoon. God knows how such a thing turns up.

dhosek2• 25 days ago

Saturday vigil masses are rather popular as they cover a Catholic’s Sunday obligation without requiring getting up early.

fuzzfactor2• 25 days ago

There's a number of streams from resorts and swimming pools, may be a good idea in case kids get into trouble around the water.

Adults too, if you had a pool like this wouldn't everybody want to share their "sex pool party cam"?

https://ipcrawl.com/?page=7&cam=398d4f57a3155d42

PhilipRoman• 25 days ago

Hah, someone from UK seems to have a camera pointing to his cannabis plants... Hopefully the guy has a "loicense" for that, otherwise it would be a hilarious way to get busted

firecall3• 25 days ago

That’s the first one I saw too.

I’m not even convinced these are all real, or at least are staged:

https://ipcrawl.com/?page=6&cam=63f7feaf5042d223

That’s the invisible man hanging out at a tennis match…

djeastm2• 25 days ago

I think the author of the website should next work on some kind of alerting system for the owners of these webcams to let them know they're exposed and how to make them private.

Then everyone could get what they want: voyeurs can watch exhibitionists like God intended.

dhosek2• 25 days ago

How do you manage that? I tried setting up a specialized directory of type-related websites and pages back around 1999–2001 and trying to find contact info for websites was difficult then when people still had public WHOIS info most of the time. I can’t imagine any scalable way to be able to connect to the owners of cams where you have little more than an IP address to work from.

(Not sure how much metadata there is on the site since it’s currently suffering the hug of death so I can’t see anything at the moment.)

zydrahydra• 24 days ago

Perhaps the providers should offer a way similar to abuse etc. because these Cameras are probably used in botnets as well.

naturalmovement4• 25 days ago

Everyone: For a moment forget everything you know about computers and wonder if perhaps 99% of normies are just following the directions on the package of their $19 Chinese IP camera. They have no idea what a firewall is, or what the "public internet" even means.

There's also a difference between your neighbor not closing her blinds and you using a telescope to look inside her apartment, which is what sites like this are.

ryandrake3• 25 days ago

Telescope is a bad analogy. This is more like the neighbor is inadvertently projecting a feed from inside their house onto a display outside by the sidewalk for any passers-by to see.

what• 25 days ago

Not really? It’s just like not closing your blinds and being shocked that people on the street can see you.

vineyardmike• 25 days ago

No.

This isn’t a passive “walked by the window” thing that you might have unwittingly viewed. To actively search for open cameras by crawling every IP then creating a tool to see them, then choosing to watch the footage is a very active, deliberate choice. No one is viewing this footage without making a multi-step choice to view it.

functionmouse• 25 days ago

No, it really isn't...

ben_w• 25 days ago

Everything is a bad analogy, because the internet has something like 6 billion of us on it these days.

We evolved for small tribes, e.g. Dunbar's number is ~150. Roughly 1/129 of the people on the internet are software developers, so in the days of everyone living in villages your in-group would include roughly one person who thinks like we think.

"Inadvertently live-streaming to the 1/129 of the world who consider searches like this to be trivial, with zero feedback unless you found your home accidentally went viral" is not like anything we otherwise experience.

If anything, projecting onto a nearby sidewalk as you describe is more like "I was bathing after my day's work scribing for the king and wouldn't you know it, that 𒈗𒍠𒄀𒋛 living by the temple decided to walk right in and say hi! Doesn't even think to knock, just opened my front door and walked right in.", while the closest thing you can find to accidental live webcams in old writing is gods spying on mortals for fun, making us the Anansi, the Loki, the Eshu. And for the furries, the Coyote.

QuantumNomad_2• 25 days ago

I still don’t understand how someone can end up accidentally exposing things to the public internet. With every ISP I have ever had in my country, it’s all NAT by default. Whatever I connect to my network, wired or wireless, would not be publicly accessible just like that unless I really really went out of my way to make it publicly accessible.

How do so many people end up exposing these cameras to the public internet? Are their ISPs not using NAT by default? Are the users jumping through hoops in order to open it up?

Phil_Latio• 25 days ago

UPnP is not disabled by default on all routers, especially older ones. So devices may just try to port-forward certain control or media ports.

1e1a• 25 days ago

Many consumer routers allow any connected device to configure port forwarding using UPnP. If you want, you can play around with this using a client such as miniupnpc's example client.

fc417fc8024• 25 days ago

Is your ISP doing CGNAT? At least in the US that's not the norm. Most people have publicly routable IPv4 addresses (even if they rotate somewhat frequently) and most routers are configured to support UPnP out of the box.

This is an example of everything working as intended. The cameras are supposed to be accessable when you're not at home. Of course the cameras ought to ship with randomized default auth on a sticker attached to the unit the same way any half decent router does these days but they don't.

bbor• 25 days ago

These are cameras sold specifically to be available over the open internet, I guess.

microgpt3• 25 days ago

The professional installers know how to get real public IPs from their ISPs (for a price). They're using a different instruction book than the consumer with the cheap Chinese home camera.

marysol511• 24 days ago

UPnP exists, it's a really weird bit of technology that goes against all ideas of "security".

"Hey, so I can just do a HTTP request to the router and open a port? Neat"

Used to use it back in the day when my ISP didn't allow for port forwarding, but did allow UPnP, so had a cron job that re-opened it every x hours when it reset.

wyager• 25 days ago

99.9% of normies have a router NATing all their traffic

It takes active effort to expose a camera publicly

fc417fc8024• 25 days ago

Unless that camera uses UPnP and has no auth configured by default.

Aurornis• 25 days ago

and wonder if perhaps 99% of normies are just following the directions on the package of their $19 Chinese IP camera.

I doubt that the instructions for a cheap camera have enough information to walk a non-technical user through the process of setting up port forwarding on their specific router.

I could believe that it’s automatic port forwarding via UPnP for some of these cameras.

However a lot of them are from contractors who install the cameras for people as a service and this is the only way they know how to get them remote access. It’s the same reason different industrial controls and other machines keep getting exposed to the internet. Some installer with a git-er-done attitude knows their customer wants a solution to something (remote access) and they use the first technique they can find to accomplish that without any concern about what it means. They accomplish the thing the customer wants, collect payment, and disappear.

If the customer calls back with a complaint about it, the contractor will happily come visit the site and try to “fix” it for another fee.

If you’re thinking that this is a liability issue you’re not wrong, but in much of the world there is no realistic recourse. Most things like this are pure caveat emptor.

naturalmovement4• 25 days ago

Most CCTV contractors are not network security experts.

Most network security experts would quit before ever entering a hot attic.

So Cletus the CCTV guy who just spent 8 hours crawling through drop ceilings with a mask on, does a super-clean install, and sets it up as well as he knows how. Which is "good enough" — it works and he's off to the next job. The customer's happy and he gets paid.

Now which one of you network security guys is going to give up his cushy WFH job to go make house calls for CCTV wages?

petra• 25 days ago

Setting port forwarding is the wrong ux for this.

It should be something simple like:

-everything is encrypted

- at install I tap my phone on the camera, now my Google account(or something similar) is linked to it as admin.

- on that some simple key management architecture should be built

My_Name4• 25 days ago

I see it more like that there are things you can do to make sure nobody else gets into your home, like locking the door.

If your door is unlocked, either through ignorance or negligence, it's still not right for someone else to just walk into your home and look through stuff you thought was private.

Sure, they can do it, but just being able to easily do something doesn't make it right.

pibaker3• 25 days ago

You'll be surprised by the number of people who thinks if you leave your internet door unlocked then your internet belongings are free to take. There is someone in this very thread arguing that having an internet enable camera in your home turns your home into a public place.

It is also funny, and depressing that many of the same people who think might makes right on the internet ends up lamenting how fucked up life is in their low trust societies, when their mindset is exactly what makes a high trust society — you know, the ones where people don't lock doors — impossible.

pibaker3• 25 days ago

I'd also ask us tech savvy people to practice some humility.

Yes, the people setting up these cameras are not following security best practices. But are you sure that you will not make the same mistakes? Are you sure you have never exposed anything you should not have on the Internet, and never will, even as you age?

Let anyone among you who is without fumbling security be the first to throw a stone.

NamlchakKhandro• 25 days ago

pfffa haha, i don't drink instant coffee and am not religious, therefore am intellectually god like compared to <insert group i'm objectifying today>

mordechai9000• 25 days ago

I worked for a small, local ISP in the mid 2000s. I don't think I made any stupid mistakes on my part, but I had plenty of coworkers who did. To be fair, people were often actively hostile to security concerns back then. It's not much better now, but at least not everything gets a public IP by default.

bluefirebrand• 25 days ago

Personally, I'm not a security expert. I've worked in web for near 20 years, on some reasonably large network projects so I've picked up things here and there, but I still defer to our actual security experts when we roll things out

That said, I'm not 100% convinced I could set up a webcam streaming online without accidentally exposing it to the wider internet. Maybe 95% sure? But if even I couldn't guarantee it, what chance does your average joe who mostly only uses his computer for netflix have?

barbazoo2• 25 days ago

There's also a difference between your neighbor not closing her blinds and you using a telescope to look inside her apartment, which is what sites like this are.

How else are things supposed to change. Hopefully this will embarrass some oligarch enough to force companies to close their loopholes.

cwmoore2• 25 days ago

What could go possibly go wrong with “point and shoot”?

alfiedotwtf• 25 days ago

$19 Chinese IP cameras? Try $800 dashcams. Blackview dashcams by default join the company’s public webcam feed which is viewable inside their app.

spzb2• 25 days ago

This seems to just be a map interface to Shodan Images. I've found the exact same camera with the exact same snapshot on both sites.

https://images.shodan.io/?query=port%3A554+country%3A%22GB%2...

https://ipcrawl.com/imce?cam=069b2971c357edbd

janoelze2• 25 days ago

I dont think it is? https://alec.is/posts/ip-crawl-exposing-the-massive-open-web...

spzb2• 25 days ago

You think two independent scans of the internet captured the same image with the same timestamp entirely by coincidence?

Edit: they're literally the same image

2fc4ad21cfce564f7aa65942eae7d4529c8af3d7ffb6287aa1fd79ebb78eb648 ipcrawl.jpg

2fc4ad21cfce564f7aa65942eae7d4529c8af3d7ffb6287aa1fd79ebb78eb648 shodan.jpg

dakolli• 25 days ago

Weird https://ipcrawl.com/?page=6&cam=63f7feaf5042d223

firecall3• 25 days ago

Must be staged?

elorant• 25 days ago

I’m more interested in how they do large scans without their ISP or hosting provider going bananas about it.

basilikum• 25 days ago

There a plenty of hosting providers who do not care about port scanning. And as long as you don't DOS or brute force credentials, why should anyone? It's the public internet. You're just sending traffic over a public network people chose to connect to.

gkbrk• 25 days ago

If your ISP cares, you need a better ISP.

_HMCB_• 25 days ago

One word: crazy

Havoc• 25 days ago

Totally left field request I know but does anyone know of a webcam that can do RTSP/sane protocol and long focus (think looking outside at landscape)?

retardedsecguy• 25 days ago

People hating on this project should ask themselves, should Shodan be taken down too? Because you can easily find these camera feeds on there too.

andai• 25 days ago

Site won't load for me, but I remember in the late 2000s when I was a kid, I found online some string you could type into Google and it would give you unsecured webcams in the results. (Not sure why Google was indexing random people's home IPs, how does the crawler even end up there?)

I recall most of them were in Asia.. street cameras, supermarkets.. then I suddenly found myself looking into someone's bedroom.

Fortunately it was empty, but I promptly shat myself and turned off my computer.

marysol511• 24 days ago

Those were all pages that were on HTTP(s), these won't turn up on Google unless someone links to it.

bouncycastle• 25 days ago

Perhaps someone could have some fun with this...

Feeding faked looped security camera footage is a classic plot device in many films, and could make some good comedy!

These days you could do with AI. Godzilla over Tokyo anyone?

barbazoo2• 25 days ago

Imagine you're at work and there's a camera behind you filming everything you do and it's just out in the open.

https://ipcrawl.com/?page=2&cam=6a12c0423e8e0193

EvanAnderson• 25 days ago

So many cameras pointed at billboards. I assume it's a quality assurance thing.

greatgib• 25 days ago

I might be wrong, but I have a very very big suspicion that this website is fake and probably a scam of some way.

If you look at it, all "feeds" that are without any moving part or human are "live", and when there is anything that could have movements, then it is a "snapshot" that doesn't move.

And then there is this very funny one that I'm quite sure is AI generated: https://ipcrawl.com/?page=2&cam=63f7feaf5042d223 The picture: blob:https://ipcrawl.com/939da98f-dfbf-4019-8518-8bfbdfbcb8df

alainx277• 24 days ago

Yes, as someone else pointed out the snapshot cameras are just results from Shodan.

The "live" aspect is also questionable, as I can see broad daylight on a camera where in reality it's currently after sunset and pitch black.

If I had to guess I'd say that the project is obviously AI generated and the creator has probably not caught all the "workarounds" and "clever tricks" the vibe coding has produced...

tamimio• 25 days ago

Meanwhile I have thingino firmware on the camera with 64+ long pass running on local nvr on a separate lan reachable through vpn only, and I still physically cover the lens when I sit in the living room, crazy stuff.

madeonsunday• 25 days ago

@dang Shouldn't there be a warning in the title? Atlas makes it sound like pins on a map. I, for one, would be highly uncomfortable to open this and see something private that someone has unwittingly shared with the internet.

I also question whether this site really fits with HN's values. By being so highly ranked here, a great number of eyeballs are being directed at cameras that are clearly not supposed to be publicly accessible. At a minimum that doesn't seem especially kind.

janoelze2• 25 days ago

regardless of which side the author personally finds themselves on the privacy debate here; there's cameras directed baby's changing tables. the snapshots are hosted from the ipcrawl itself. it doesn't take a genius to put one and one together. this is potentially generating imagery you absolutely don't want to host from/on your domain.

adrianwaj• 25 days ago

Why don't any of them have sound? Any way to sort on resolution and frame rate? Multiple cameras at any one location?

Plot-twist: large bunch of people here are willing to have their life made public.

Would be interesting if people could claim their camera and use the site to keep a long-term archive of footage. AI could detect various activities too and notify owners of thieves, intruders or infidelity. Could also charge outsiders to view. Best if streams were made private first to stop mirror sites. What happens if certain householders or visitors aren't told about the camera while being recorded?

wolvoleo5• 25 days ago

I can see my house from here!

AstroNutt• 25 days ago

It is kind of weird seeing inside someone house. I only went a few pages in, but what the hell is this?

https://ipcrawl.com/?page=2&cam=63f7feaf5042d223

gmerc• 25 days ago

Sex-Offender-roulette.com is still available for this.

microgpt3• 25 days ago

How do you find an ISP that doesn't kick you out for scanning?

marysol511• 24 days ago

You buy bandwidth from a proper one. I've never been "kicked off" before, only had the odd "You might be compromised" e-mail from scanning a honeypot.

Also so many people are infected with malware constantly scanning that ISP's don't bother

marysol511• 24 days ago

One of the top ones, is a camera of a weed farm, in the UK. Which is a licensed activity, not in some 2-bit setup like this.

Which I thought was hilarious!

IP Crawl: Living atlas of open webcams discovered on the public internet

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