Belkin Criticized For Its Upcoming Bricking of NetCams (forbes.com) 88
A Forbes contributor notes that Belkin abruptly announced the end-of-life for its Wemo NetCams, which will discontinued on May 29 2020. But that's just the beginning...
Unlike many other end-of-life announcements which simply render products ineligible for support or upgrades, Belkin is literally pulling the plug on its Cloud service, rendering its NetCam range of home security cameras as useless beige bricks...
The question of how Belkin are deliberately bricking their products needs to be called out. When the NetCam was released, users had the option to use the Wemo software (which was lousy) or connect to the cameras using ffmpeg with their favourite NVS platform or even with VLC or equivalent. However, in a firmware update a few years back — Belkin disabled this capability. While workarounds do exist, such as the one published by Vladimir Sobolev in 2018, the whole premise of buying a Belkin product is for ease of use and simplicity. Belkin claim to design 'people inspired products'. All customers of Belkin need to look carefully at these words and see how they match up with their deeds?
How many other Belkin products might be switched off on a whim?
The criticism can be applied to cloud-enabled products as a whole, but in the main — vendors understand that to alienate customers by bricking their possessions is not a viable long term strategy to maintain trust...
Forthcoming European legislation forcing technology companies to make their products easier to repair should go some way to address these concerns.
The article points out that even Microsoft gave Windows 7 users five years of warnings about its 2020 end-of-life.
And it also complains property owners now face two difficult choices: "Either leaving their property with no security system and zero surveillance capability, or breaking the quarantine orders in order to install new equipment."
The question of how Belkin are deliberately bricking their products needs to be called out. When the NetCam was released, users had the option to use the Wemo software (which was lousy) or connect to the cameras using ffmpeg with their favourite NVS platform or even with VLC or equivalent. However, in a firmware update a few years back — Belkin disabled this capability. While workarounds do exist, such as the one published by Vladimir Sobolev in 2018, the whole premise of buying a Belkin product is for ease of use and simplicity. Belkin claim to design 'people inspired products'. All customers of Belkin need to look carefully at these words and see how they match up with their deeds?
How many other Belkin products might be switched off on a whim?
The criticism can be applied to cloud-enabled products as a whole, but in the main — vendors understand that to alienate customers by bricking their possessions is not a viable long term strategy to maintain trust...
Forthcoming European legislation forcing technology companies to make their products easier to repair should go some way to address these concerns.
The article points out that even Microsoft gave Windows 7 users five years of warnings about its 2020 end-of-life.
And it also complains property owners now face two difficult choices: "Either leaving their property with no security system and zero surveillance capability, or breaking the quarantine orders in order to install new equipment."
This is why (Score:1)
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Yes, what Belkin did is shitty. But it is not unexpected. "The Cloud" is just another name for "Someone else's computer".
If you didn't see this coming, then you are an idiot who deserves to get screwed.
If you buy *ANY* product that cannot work without being connected to "The Cloud" then you are an idiot who deserves to get screwed.
Re:This is why (Score:5, Insightful)
If you didn't see this coming, then you are an idiot who deserves to get screwed.
As much as I love the Internet, and having been around since the BBS days, I remember not having it ... it’s sad to see what it’s done to people.
“If you don’t have the same knowledge that I do, then you deserve bad things to happen to you.”
How sad.
The IQ of the average American is 98. Critical/abstract thinking begins around 110. 2/3rds of Americans just don’t think like many of you, and it’s not their fault. No, they don’t deserve to be shit on by large corporations which prey on their lack of sophistication.
While your knowlege about this issue will save you from the same fate, it clearly does not make you a good person.
So, they deserve to be screwed ... ok.
I’m curious, though, what do you deserve?
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Re:This is why (Score:5, Insightful)
I see. Well there you go then. I mean, anyone not taking your advice should not just get ripped off, they should probably be institutionalized. I mean, you're you! amirite? You've been watching a reality show through your own eyes all your life, and it's starred you. Isn't everyone else watching the same show??!! I mean, what the hell man?!! Who in their right mind would do differently than what you explicitly told them to do? Surely they are aware of your universal correctness?
I stand corrected. They do deserve whatever bad things happens to them. After all, had God wanted them to be blameless, he'd have made them you.
P.S. It's kind of an open secret that people ask for our advice far less than we say they do. I'm in the industry, and I can't remember the last time someone asked me to make a home security camera recommendation. Actually, I'm pretty sure it's never happened. They have these websites devotes to potential purchases, with reviews and everything, and gone are the days that one person's advice is the end-all.
Re: This is why (Score:1)
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Their previous attempt to screw their customers: forcing adverts into their html [slashdot.org] and a cock up that broke connectivity [slashdot.org] haven't stopped people buying their products.
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As far as I'm aware, the debacle you probably meant has never harmed actual FTDI customers. Correct me if I'm wrong.
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Excellent rant, hats off.
I do get asked occasionally about home security cameras, but that's because I work in physical security. People don't take my initial advice, but that's because the professional quality cameras that I recommend (Axis) cost an arm and a leg. Generally they'll come back and say, "I'm looking at product XYZ, what do you think?" At that point I have some clue what they actually want, and can give a reasonable yes/no recommendation or maybe point them at a better alternative for their
Re: This is why (Score:3)
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and/or is just simpler to use because it is plug-and-play
Curious, did you actually offer your services for free to help implement your complex suggestion or is your attitude to just say "fuck those who don't big brain computers like us 1337 haX0rs!"
But later when they start having problems they try to blame me about why their equipment does not work properly.
That is because you have fundamentally presented yourself as part of the problem.
Re: This is why (Score:2)
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I'm guessing he'll be the first to be incensed if an expert in a field he knows little about, say a plumber, auto mechanic, lawyer, or electrician says he deserves what he got because he fell for a quick fix.
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If that is true, then one of several things is also true - your data source is faulty, or your data source is reporting IQ tests designed for a higher intelligence population than the US population, or there is some other SNAFU in the reporting that you're re-reporting.
An IQ test reports the relative performance of the test subject to the average of their population. If the sampling of the population has been done properly, then an IQ test has a mean of 100(%). As a fur
Good! (Score:2)
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OR we could get some actual consumer protection that punishes companies that make their products cloud dependent and then decide to abandon them without compensation. That would make the bad companies less eager to pull that sort of jack assery and nobody has to be burned.
Re: Good! (Score:2)
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Except that for security cameras, having recording off site is beneficial in case of total loss.
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Or for that matter, even partial loss. Almost no one does basic maintenance on their DVR/NVR, it just sits in the corner ignored until they need some video off it. Then they find that the storage drive crashed six months ago, or the camera that they really need failed last week. The better cloud services can notify you when a camera goes offline or is blocked/out of focus.
Re: This is why (Score:2)
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Thing is, nobody buys Belkin for the brand. They buy it for the value. They'll create another similar product in a year and people will buy it forgetting all about this.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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A step beyond (Score:5, Interesting)
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Belkin pretend to be a high end vendor but always use cheap parts, poor design and terrible service. Always have, always will.
More of this coming (Score:2, Insightful)
It takes money and more importantly skilled employees to keep these IOT web portals running and secure. Belkin has simply looked at their incoming revenue versus costs and decided to exit the business. The people running the web portal for Belkin may have quit and Belkin decided it is not worth the effort to replace them. I'm not surprised by this and we are only going to see more of it. At the high end, Amazon and Google are eating the home IOT marketplace. And the low end companies like Wyze are offerin
Re: More of this coming (Score:1)
Deliberate destruction of an end-user's property is not the same as ending support and updates. I would put it more on par with vandalism. Maybe even criminal threat. Extortion is a good way to go to prison and throws the doors wide open for additional civil liabilities.
Frankly these tech companies have way too much power with their shrink wrap licenses and click through agreements that allow unlimited changes to terms. It's not a real contract if you can't reasonable follow it or negotiate terms. If you do
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They article is a little twisted, they didn't "brick" the camera with a firmware update like Sonos did. They "bricked" the camera by turning off the cloud servers. The cameras are still working, the web portal for accessing them is gone. Belkin was running that web portal on a cloud server, nothing in your local possession was altered. There is an open source project [github.com] that will still let you use them.
This is like saying the phone company "bricked" you phone because you stopped paying your phone bill. Your
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Workaround ad absurdum (Score:1)
I installed a raspberry pi in a cinder block. Not even actual bricks can be bricked.
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Removing the "I didn't pay my bill" part, as this post does, makes the phone analogy an almost perfect fit.
AT&T did essentially that to me back in the DSL days: they essentially turned off DSL and landline phone, requiring me to move to Uverse, or some non-landline provider (100% cell, Comcast with an IP phone from them, etc., or even just using USPS to send letters). In this case Belkin actually did kill the cameras completely (because the ability to use a non-proprietary protocol for access was remove
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Not caring enough about this to do more than a skin-deep check, the github project has been going for 3 years (well before this event) and seems to still be active.
There was a subscription model somewhere? I didn't notice (at skin-deep level).
Hardware with a non-trivial possibility of privacy issues that uses an internet service? That'd set my internal "do not tou
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I am pretty sure Belkin will plead "not guilty by reason of corporate insanity" - who could argue against that?
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Deliberate destruction of an end-user's property
Honestly, at this point I would first check the EULAs before claiming that the product I bought is actually my property versus it's only licensed to me.
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It looks like Belkin was using the "iSecurity+" cloud video monitoring service, which Belkin doesn't own. There are multiple web cam vendors who use this service, including the baby monitor that I used about 7 years ago. It served it's purpose a long time ago, and I guess that I can throw it in the trash now.
It sounds like Belkin got screwed in this deal as well. That said, they should offer at least one final firmware update to allow direct connection to the cameras using VLC once more.
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It's not like this has never happened. Look at Google. They're putting services down every year.
Kiiled by Google [killedbygoogle.com]
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I didn't think to mention IRIS by Lowe's. At least they offered refunds.
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Belkin has simply looked at their incoming revenue versus costs and decided to exit the business
I think it’s the removal of other means of use that is the critical part.
Exit the business, fine, but doing so after crippling the devices so they won’t work after you go is pure shit filth evil.
Remember, this is a company that would feign a heart attack and go on about how an employee “didn’t represent the values of the company” if they even muttered something un-PC.
Well, this move
And you can reflash them with open source code. (Score:3)
And the low end companies like Wyze are offering similar cameras for $20.
And you can reflash them with open-source code and own your own camera, rather than be dependent on the company's firmware and servies.
A quick search shows the OpenIPC project, as of two years back,, provides open source firmware for some wyze cameras.
If they do this, then either refund, replace. (Score:2)
It is simple - if a company wants to sell a cloud connected device, then they are signing themselves up for providing the cloud part of device for as long as the device exists. If they don't want to do this, then they must disclose this, on the front of the box, at time of purchase, so people know that they are only renting the device until a certain date.
If they choose to stop, then they must make the person who bought the device whole, by either providing them a full refund or by providing an equivalent d
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It takes money and more importantly skilled employees to keep these IOT web portals running and secure. Belkin has simply looked at their incoming revenue versus costs and decided to exit the business
And as such they should be legally required to take measures to ensure existing products continue to work as advertised. Be that open source the server, open the cameras to working with alternatives, or refund users.
You Do Know Amazon Sells Security Cameras? (Score:2)
And it also complains property owners now face two difficult choices: "Either leaving their property with no security system and zero surveillance capability, or breaking the quarantine orders in order to install new equipment."
Worst false dichotomy ever [amazon.com].
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Re: You Do Know Amazon Sells Security Cameras? (Score:1)
Also, FUCK Amazon.
(It needs to be said twice.)
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That paragraph specifically refers to second homes, and asserts that many owners of second homes are prohibited from traveling between them. Sure, they could order a new camera from CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet and have it delivered to their front door. It would still be miles, perhaps hundreds of miles, from the system that is about to be bricked.
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many owners of second homes are prohibited from traveling between them
You mean that bullshit in Michigan? Elections have consequences, and so does sitting them out because the candidate you might have voted for didn't loudly pledge allegiance to your particular pet issue. So instead you give an effective half a vote to the candidate that will inherently be against your pet issues. Michigan got the governor they deserved.
Never rely on a "free" service (Score:3)
You should never rely on a service that isn't contractually bound to continue serving you. Additionally, you should have an exit strategy in the even that they do stop. However, it should go without saying that you shouldn't rely on a service (free or paid) if it can be avoided because it's a point of failure.
Frankly, if you buy consumer gear and aren't replacing the firmware on it then you are putting yourself at the mercy of the manufacturer as seen in this and many other instances.
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You should never rely on a service that isn't contractually bound to continue serving you.
I have a better idea, why not have the USA actually introduce consumer protection laws that prevent corporations from pulling a "service" that is tied to a "purchased product". A product should not cease doing exactly what is written on the box simply because a company doesn't want something anymore.
If this happened a day after you bought it, it would be called defective, or covered under bait and switch, but apparently some arbitrary time from release to bricking "normalises" this behaviour?
However, it should go without saying that you shouldn't rely on a service
These services
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I have a better idea, why not have the USA actually introduce consumer protection laws that prevent corporations from pulling a "service" that is tied to a "purchased product". A product should not cease doing exactly what is written on the box simply because a company doesn't want something anymore.
Oh gee, I hadn't thought of that, I'll just ask them and... oops, seems we have some Republican senators that don't want that. Work with what you have, not what you want to have.
These services exist because the absence of the service makes it too complicated to setup.
No, these services exist because they think they can make money off of it. The complications of DIY are a completely different matter.
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I have a wifi thermostat that was sold by 3M. It was a rebranded RadioThermostat unit that got sold in Home Depot. RT has been good about keeping their cloud service running, but there was some concern by users back when this was new, over 10 years ago. Turns out it has a local JSON-based interface that doesn't rely on the server, and cloud server URL is even configurable. So even if RT implodes, it's not a hunk of junk.
To be fair, a thermostat is a lot less complicated than a streaming speaker or webcam,
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Depends on whether the thermostat has the smarts built into it and all you're doing is sending settings, or if all the processing is done remotely and the thermostat just translates that communication into commands for the furnace and a/c units. Too many "smart" devices are like the latter. A webcam is in fact pretty simple, arguably simpler than a smart thermostat that does most processing internally. The camera is basically a receptor and image processor, feeding some kind of communication module. Everyth
Buy the Product Line (Score:3)
How much would it cost someone else in the same business to buy out the product line? They could run the backend themselves, possibly with a new firmware update to make it integrate a bit with the rest of their products, so the existing customers would be encouraged to buy into their other products. I'm thinking someone like Google (Nest) or Amazon, but I'm sure there are plenty of other players in the industry, and I would think if Belkin is really exiting this market, it would be a double-win to sell--their customers don't think poorly of them, and they get some money for nothing.
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Why? You can by a Wyse cam right now with the same features for $20. No one would buy the Belkin line, they'd have to pay someone to take it.
Help, my Beklin router is spamming me (Score:3)
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Purchased a Belkin ethernet device to run through the house main power lines. All my computers were running Windows 98 at the time. The box specifically said it supported Windows 98 AND Windows 98 Second Edition.
The device just would not work. Thinking it defective, I returned it to Staples where I got it and got a new one.
The new one did not work either. After hours wasted playing telephone tag with Belkin tech support, turned out that it only supported Windows 98 Second Edition.
Went to r
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The device likely did not work because the two different halves of your house were wired on the two different phases of AC coming into your house. You plugged one device into each of the two phases. Theoretically powerline modem are supposed to be able to jump between the phases using the wires back to the pole, but that never worked very well in practice. If you had moved the devices around to different outlet pairs you would have found a pair that worked. All of those power line chips came from a single v
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Broken business model (Score:5, Interesting)
The vast majority of connected devices connect to a server somewhere. That server costs money to run and for a lot of companies, the whole thing is a pyramid scheme where newer buyers fund the service. It's not just this business either - years ago the Guardian Newspaper sold their mobile app for $14 - a one time fee. However, users could keep the app going for years, never paying more than the original $14. Great deal for the users, bad deal for the newspaper. The business model opted for short-term gain and kicked the can down the road on how to grow the business. Another example, Owlet, a smart baby sock company that measures baby heartbeats. Fantastic idea. So good that when your baby grows up, you give your cool bit of kit to your sister, or you sell it 2nd hand. You make some money, but Owlet doesn't. I wonder how many years those things get used for over their lifetime.
There are three answers to this:
1) Subscription model
2) Kill the service after a period of time, either explicitly or by making the item just fail.
3) Use a gadget backed by a company who will be around
Subscriptions have been incredibly difficult to make work for smart devices, but do exist. Usually, there's a freemium model where you get something for "nothing" and pay extra for premium things, like recordings. See NestCam/DropCam, etc. If you get enough paying subs, then this can work, just about. Cameras are particularly hard because they use so much bandwidth.
The second option is that you get the service for a period of time, and then it stops. Maybe you have to pay for it to continue, but basically, the online part of the system goes away. BMW tried to make their online car be subscription after a year, and even though that is LTE enabled, the uptake is very low. Tesla give it away, but exchange it for all the data they get from the fleet. The fear is that if people knew their camera would stop working after 1 year, they wouldn't buy it in the first place.
The 3rd option is that you go with a company that you know will stick around. However, even this doesn't guarantee anything. Google bought Xivly a while ago and shut it down sending a number of customers into a panic. Backend service can be very expensive, both to design right, manage and operate. Cheap Chinese gadget makers and 24x7 five 9's service don't go hand in hand. Services are emerging, backed by heavyweight companies who have an interest in making this a success though so watch this space. Fundamentally, the money has to make sense. One thing has to pay for the other.
Now, there are some other potential options:
- build it yourself - engineers love to do this, but the whole maker thing in IOT is small potatoes. Millions of lightbulbs are sold every year. It's a tiny percentage of folks would would set up their own IOT system. If you know someone who has their own mail server, or flashed their own router with Tomato then you know that type of person.
- Pseudo P2P - this is especially popular for cameras because of the high bandwidth. You run a matchmaking service that enables a user's iPhone to link directly with the NannyCam. You still have to handle the matchmaking, but it's low bandwidth compared to storing video. A lot of the cheaper cams use this.
- Real P2P - this is the nirvana of the IOT zealots (hey, it's called "Internet-of-Things" NOT "Things-Connected-to-a-server!") - a decentralized, open standards based, P2P system with no dependencies. Sounds great, and it'd be good to make it happen, somehow. But companies who sell *products* want products that work and can be tested, so you don't see a lot of P2P smart gadgets for sale, yet. Also, you'll still need someone to provide security updates and things like mobile app updates and those have to be paid for somehow. Tech is a moving target and so are the hackers who would love to turn on every single AC in the EU at once.
The final option is to go low-tech and not connect. However, there is definitely value to connecting some things (except dishwashers
You missed one (Score:2)
Now, there are some other potential options...
You hit a bunch of pieces of it, but I submit that it's still possible to have hybrid functionality. PoE security cameras can have a cloudy solution with an appy-app that it ships with, maybe including two years of free use with additional years paid subscription available, and then having generic RTSP video data accessible via an IP address. My TP-Link light bulbs have a mobile app that I can use to control them from anywhere if I have an account...or, I can use them with HomeAssist or OpenHAB.
Essentially,
Obsolesence sales tax surcharge of 20% (Score:2)
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You left out 2 more options. Move the server onto the device itself and optionally run an external server to make it easier to connect to (a matchmaker server) or provide the server software so the user can run it on their own PC to talk to their own devices, and preferably publish the API.
These days, even the low cost embedded microcontrolers have more than enough capability to run a mini-server on the device itself. Many of them would easily out-perform a mid '90s desktop PC. They sell for less than $10 a
IoT umm yeah (Score:3)
That's not enough (Score:2)
Don't buy anything that requires an on-line connection, even if you don't use the features offered through the connection.
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This is why I refuse to purchase anything that requires an off site solution controlled by a company.
You're in a privilaged position to be able to do so. As am I. I however am not at all under any delusion that someone could setup "Own Cloud" or "Homeassistant" or any of those other DIY cloud solutions currently on the market.
I am a nerd, and proud. But that unfortunately sets me apart from *most* people who buy consumer electronics.
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Actually most IoT devices are NOT "run by IT companies with dubious goals", they're run by either their owner's IT staff or by a company that has clearly defined goals. That's because the vast majority of IoT devices are things like smart streetlights, fish counters, field moisture meters, sewage flow meters, smart electrical meters, factory automation, and the like. By the end of the year there will be 20 BILLION of them deployed,
If you tolerate this... (Score:3)
I'm all for bricking all netcams. (Score:1, Funny)
And bricking all "smart" speakers. ;)
And bricking all those who buy them.
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Honestly, that wave of outrage is going to be coming in the next few years. We should all know that at some point Amazon and Google aren't going to want to support the original versions of their smart speakers once they're more than 10 years old, and they'll start cutting off support for those as well.
I'd imagine that they'll start by refusing to add new features/skills to the existing older smart speakers for a few years before cutting them off outright, though.
This is why we need hackers (Score:2)
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This is why people should support Right to Repair legislation even if they personally don't believe they have the ability to do the repairs.
This is also why manufacturers hire lobbyists against Right to Repair. They don't want to be forced to sell good products for fair prices at a fair profit.
No more IOT from Belkin for me... (Score:1)
Belkin and Netgear are on the bottom of my list (Score:1)
In my experience (Score:2)
Belkin products are usually priced at a premium but often are functionally inferior to the competition. I've never personally bought a Belkin product... but at my job people inexplicably keep buying their stuff, and invariably they end up having issues and are eventually replaced (or just shelved). You'd think after a while they'd learn, but it doesn't seem to happen.
They need to revert (Score:2)
TLDR but they should then offer a firmware update to allow you to set up your own server. Or perhaps entertain spinning the service off to some other company that wants to handle it, though I canâ(TM)t see trusting an unknown company with feeds.
People are not going to buy from you anymore (Score:2)
They will get burned once and your brand might as well not exist to them.
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I wish that were true, but so many companies whose names I recognize are bad actors that I've started to lose track of them.
Sadly, yes (Score:2)
"The criticism can be applied to cloud-enabled products as a whole"
Yep. My cat's catfood feeder is a useless piece of plastic now since its maker and supporter (Petnet) went paws up a few months. Absolutely no recourse at all, nor can it be used locally without the cloud.
I'm sure some people are rolling their eyes at a web-enabled cat feeder, but they must a) not have a cat or b) ever travel.
no surprising (Score:2)
this is one of the major problems with devices requiring cloud service. Fortunately, if you still have your receipt and still under warranty, you can get a refund. I looked at their cams not too long ago - good thing it was only look :-)
Within the next couple of years, I believe a lot of older smart devices will be discontinued and bricked.
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