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from the you-should-see-what-you're-missing! dept.
Guardzilla Shuts Down, Leaving Security Camera Customers Stranded:
Guardzilla, a small home security camera company, has quietly gone out of business, leaving behind unpatched security flaws, barely or nonworking cameras in lots of consumers' homes, and piles of essentially useless cameras that are still being sold at Bed Bath & Beyond, QVC, and other retailers.
Consumer Reports learned earlier this month that Guardzilla had closed its doors when our test engineers tried to follow up about security problems they found with the Guardzilla 360. We disclosed the issues to Guardzilla last fall. The company fixed one problem, but never addressed a second one.
The company has stopped responding to emails and its phone number is no longer working. A message posted on its website at the beginning of June reads: “We deeply regret that these troubling times have caused us to close our doors. We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused, as we will be unable to continue support for the Guardzilla product line.”
Like other internet-connected security cameras, Guardzilla cameras stored users' video clips on corporate servers. The servers continued working intermittently until mid-June but now appear to be completely shut down.
[...] In addition to Bed Bath & Beyond and QVC, these cameras can still be purchased at Amazon Marketplace, Buy Buy Baby, eBay, and Newegg Marketplace. Consumer Reports reached out to these companies to find out why they continue to sell Guardzilla cameras. Only eBay had replied by the time of publication, and says it will continue to sell the cameras for now.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Friday June 26 2020, @07:45PM (31 children)
Sounds kind of odd. So someone buys this, gets it home, connects it and you get a fat error since it won't work cause there are no servers to connect to, they complain and send it back and get a refund. Or are they somehow configurable (or hackable) so you can set another location to store data?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2020, @07:50PM (6 children)
eBay's business model is reliant on buyers being too lazy to complain about defective or deceptive items. It's a win-win: sellers make a sale, eBay makes its commission, and buyers learn a valuable lesson.
(Score: 5, Informative) by epitaxial on Friday June 26 2020, @08:18PM (5 children)
Its cheaper for them to issue some refunds than police their own site.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday June 26 2020, @08:27PM (3 children)
I don't think it costs Ebay anything to issue refunds. Ebay is pretty famous for always being on the buyer's side, so if the buyer complains, then Ebay will force the seller to refund them (which comes out of the seller's pocket), yet Ebay still keeps the commission and fees. There's really no reason for Ebay to stop the sale of these things, because all the risk is borne by the sellers, not Ebay.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday June 27 2020, @02:56AM (2 children)
How does that work if the seller declares bankruptcy?
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Saturday June 27 2020, @03:34AM
That's a really good question. IANAL, but my brother is and I'll ask him. For now I'll speculate: you probably know that if someone declares bankruptcy, the creditors get some percentage of the money owed... maybe. You may know this too: you can win a civil case and judgement (money) but getting the money out of the other person can be very difficult and could take years. So it all depends on how much $ we're talking about. In most states the fee to file a small claim costs from $35 to $100, so you're not likely to do that on something less than $200.
Ebay should have a buyer's insurance system in place- something to protect against ripoffs, bankruptcies, etc. Maybe they do and I'm not aware. I know they try to sell you some kind of extended warranty on things; I barely take notice.
I got ripped off, only maybe $20, for something that was supposedly in USA, but suddenly the tracking put it in Hong Kong or somewhere over there. Needless to say, I never got the item. I'm now suspicious of items that will take weeks to arrive.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @04:39AM
I imagine the product is being sold by third party sellers. The manufacturer may have gone bankrupt but third party sellers still have product sitting around that they want to sell. I'm sure at least some of those third party sellers sell other products as well.
(Score: 5, Informative) by RS3 on Friday June 26 2020, @08:52PM
They do somewhat rely on crowdsourcing- there's always a "report item" link on the auction item page. However, I've tried it a couple of times and they force you into multiple-choice maze with no appropriate options and after a lot of pointless clicking you give up.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Friday June 26 2020, @08:23PM (22 children)
>Or are they somehow configurable (or hackable) so you can set another location to store data?
Very unlikely, however it's always possible to use your own server with any IOT device. But it won't be easy.
For instance, I have an automatic cat litter box with WiFi; I can use an app on my phone to see its status, see error messages, etc., from anywhere on the planet. Of course, it uses a proprietary protocol, and connects to the company's server somewhere to accomplish this. You can't reconfigure it, of course. However, some smart person with too much time on his hands reverse-engineered the thing, and put up a web page with his findings, and was able to set up his own server for his litter box to connect to. IIRC, this required configuring his Wi-Fi router to reroute connections to the company's server to his own server, in addition to writing his own software (which sounded not that difficult, as the communication protocol is pretty simple). Of course, writing your own smartphone app to replace the official one will be even more work, but the point of all this is that it IS possible to get around needing to use a company's IT infrastructure to use their device, however it isn't easy by any means usually, though of course it helps a lot when there's enough skilled people buying the things that someone might want to put in that effort and share the results.
(Score: 3, Funny) by looorg on Friday June 26 2020, @08:45PM (8 children)
Why does the litterbox have wifi? Is it so you know when it's full of shit or are you tracking your cats bowlmovements? Or is it so some vendor can send you catlitter before it runs out? What is it that is so interesting so that you need an app to track the pooping?
I figured that might be what you would have to resort to, wireshark yourself (or software of your choice) to find the device. Reroute it to your own machine and then do something with all the data. I guess the issue here is that perhaps the littler box vendor will be suspicious if it doesn't get it's required poop-data and try and send updates to you or eventually it might be irl and start to send actual mail to wonder why your cat is drowning in its own poop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2020, @08:55PM (5 children)
Cat's a life-like droid that homes in on WiFi.
(Score: 5, Funny) by looorg on Friday June 26 2020, @09:04PM (4 children)
Here I was thinking it was so the cat could watch cat-videos on youtube while pooping.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @05:16AM (3 children)
Here I was thinking I could watch the cat pooping on webcam.
-1 would not buy again
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday June 27 2020, @08:09AM
If the cat poops on the webcam, you won't see anything because the webcam is covered.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday June 27 2020, @10:35AM
Isn't that what the app is for? Two cats one litterbox?
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Sunday June 28 2020, @04:14AM
The company went out of business because instead of working, they were all too busy watching people's cats taking shits and the pet owners sued for invasion of privacy.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2020, @10:43PM
Because the cocaine fueled marketing-droids in the marketing department needed some new "whizz-bang" feature to add to "out sell" the competition, and of course everything "WiFi" was new and fancy, so "WiFi catbox" it became.
The marketing department is almost always the ones at fault for device X having absolutely unnecessary feature Y.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Sunday June 28 2020, @12:55AM
It's actually an extra-cost feature (you have to pay $50 more for it, though I think they're moving to make it standard for all of them on the newest models). The main benefit is that you can see when the waste drawer is supposedly full, and also look at the history of the device, to see if there's a problem. Like any somewhat complex product with sensors and moving parts, things go wrong, and using the app lets you see when some sensor is having a problem or behaving erratically. If you're away from home, it lets you check on the box and see that it's going through a normal number of cycles every day, or if it's gotten stuck with some kind of error so you can call your cat-sitter and have them go over and check it out in person for you. Is this stuff absolutely necessary for a litterbox? Of course not. But for an automated self-cleaning box, it's a pretty handy feature, especially if you travel and leave your cats alone for a few days at a time. Also, one nice thing is that, beyond the initial cost, it doesn't cost anything to use. There's no monthly fees for using the app or the company's servers (and honestly, with the amount of data generated by this thing, and the total number of these wifi-connected litterboxes, it's so tiny that you could probably run the whole thing on a small server and still have very low load). And if the company ever shuts off the server or goes out of business, the litterbox will still work fine, though of course the phone app won't work, but the front-panel controls really do everything absolutely necessary, they just don't give you the connectivity, logging, or detailed information messages, and instead have some flashing lights you have to interpret.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by EJ on Friday June 26 2020, @09:01PM (3 children)
Except in the case where a company builds in a time-bomb that bricks the device after some period of not receiving some special encrypted package from the company's servers.
If you want to be completely evil, you design your device to work properly for a month until it needs a new authentication key that is stored in a secure ROM area of a chip that cannot be manually flashed from outside. Maybe someone eventually figures it out, but by that time most of the devices are already permanently bricked, like when you enter the wrong passcode for your phone too many times.
IMO, the best business model is to sell a device at a profit. The end. Any extra service you want to provide is just a bonus. If you build the perfect battery that never dies, then eventually everyone will have all that they need, and you go out of business. You need to plan your business model around that concept.
(Score: 3, Touché) by RS3 on Saturday June 27 2020, @03:40AM
What? A world without greed? Count me in! Maybe there's such a country and I don't know about it yet.
A lot of software will quit running unless it can phone home. I'm sure there are tons of examples, but one that comes to mind: SolidWorks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @05:28AM
Friend, you need to learn the value of business innovation.
Canon have 600 models of printer and 601 different ink cartridges.
Every model REQUIRES a different cartridge. For your convenience.
You can't buy replacement parts. For your convenience.
The shit dies 1 month after warranty. For your convenience.
$400 of pristine plastic heading to the landfill.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday June 28 2020, @12:59AM
Except in the case where a company builds in a time-bomb that bricks the device after some period of not receiving some special encrypted package from the company's servers.
Why would any company do this? I've never heard of any IoT device that did anything like this, and for good reason: what's the point? 1) There's too much potential for customer returns (people plugging it in and not bothering to set it up on WiFi for a while), and 2) it would cost real money in engineering time and development, and 3) what do they have to gain, besides just being evil? Rationally-run companies only do evil things to their customers when they stand to gain a lot from it, like preventing them from using 3rd-party printer ink so they're forced to buy overpriced ink from the manufacturer.
If you want to be completely evil, you design your device to work properly for a month until it needs a new authentication key
Yeah, and now you have countless customers returning bricked products under warranty, and your company goes out of business.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2020, @11:28PM (6 children)
Bzzt wrong. Well-secured devices are "not crackable in the lifetime of the universe" with current decryption/cracking tools. Now, most IoT has that S in it for Security and all that, but your statement is a universal claim, which is false.
And decapping those few secure things' chips to read off the firmware doesn't even help! Because they have the public key for the server, but not the private, and you can't fake the responses with the public key.
So, I hear your sentiment, and it may often be the case, but you're very wrong in the "always" claim.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday June 27 2020, @02:28AM (3 children)
More people must be burned...and trained to noeceptivrre
t buy based on TV adverts.
And demand copyright reform.
Onse they have lost some of their own skin, they may be more receptive to telling Congress to clean up this copyright mess, or lose their seat.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday June 27 2020, @02:30AM
I hate sprllchech.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday June 27 2020, @08:14AM (1 child)
I have not the slightest idea what you are trying to say here.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday June 27 2020, @08:21AM
Neither did I, and I wrote that crap.
I did not realize part of my post had been mangled until after I had submitted.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Touché) by PartTimeZombie on Saturday June 27 2020, @03:17AM (1 child)
Wow, what an unpleasant way to reply to someone.
(Score: 4, Informative) by RS3 on Saturday June 27 2020, @03:46AM
You must be new here. But seriously, thanks for saying that. I've been vocal about the sometimes biker bar atmosphere here. That said, I am, slowly, learning to edit a bit more before I hit "submit". But my verbal skills are weak and always have been, so I do best around people who are kind, resilient, give benefit of the doubt, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @08:38AM
It doesn't use HTTP(s)?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday June 28 2020, @03:28AM
If we had real consumer protection, an IOT company would be obligated to at least provide full documentation and devkit if they decide to shut down the servers for any reason (including bankruptcy). Most owners wouldn't be able to do anything with that, but it only takes one to put out a new open firmware.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2020, @11:22PM
It's not odd. The cameras can be thought of as "as-is" and for parts. Cameras sold as working, the ebay buyer could force a chargeback, and ebay is pretty ok about giving the buyer the benefit of the doubt.