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Outdoor security cameras are still on your property (or they should be) and they typically fall under the same laws as indoor cameras. As long as security cameras generally face public spots -- the front of your home, sidewalks and streets -- they fall well within the law. If you're the owner, you have the right to film your backyard and other parts of your property, too. However, you cannot film areas where other people have a reasonable expectation of privacy. That means you cannot film a neighbor's backyard or angle a camera so that it can record through their windows. Many cameras have pri

A privacy zone is an area you draw across a security camera's field of view to mark that spot as off-limits, meaning the camera won't detect motion there. Within those zones, the camera won't record or send alerts triggered by movement. That's very helpful in common real-life situations. For example, there may be a deck or walkway at your home where your loved ones come and go, and you don't want your security camera constantly eavesdropping on them. You may also want to block off a nearby sidewalk so you don't get constant alerts about people jogging past in the morning. Privacy zones may eve

I like many Nest/Home products, but Nest's approach to security and privacy is a mixed bag. Similar to Amazon, Google is happy to gather as much data as possible and has been sued multiple times for violating privacy restrictions set by states and countries. While Nest itself has remained largely free of vulnerabilities thanks to Google's own security policies, a couple of notable issues give me pause. There was that infamous incident where early Home speakers accidentally eavesdropped on users in 2017 (something that has not happened since). More recently, a study found that promptware or Gem

Almost every company will use your data for analysis of some kind, such as your security app activity. Lately, many are also recruiting videos to train their AI if you sign up for cloud storage. Your best bet is to look for companies such as Ecobee that require you to opt in for sharing data for wider purposes, and companies that offer settings to automatically erase stored data or not to use it for analysis. Setting up your own privacy zones can also help limit what companies have access to.  For more information, check out my guide on the Alexa settings you should change for privacy, and the