Protecting Your Family from Webcam Hackers

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COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI)- He bought it to protect his children. Marc Gilbert and his wife use internet cameras to monitor their two small kids. So imagine their shock when a chilling voice came through the device late one evening.

“It said, wake up Allyson you little (expletive). It felt like somebody broke into our house,” said Gilbert.

Gilbert believes someone hacked into his router and camera. Someone was spying on his little girl. Columbus resident Carmen Montgomery thinks it’s disgusting that someone would use technology to spy on innocent families.

” It’s an invasion of our privacy. And it’s frightening when it’s coming into a child’s room. It’s sad there are people out there like that. People just need to be aware of that when they buy these items,” said Montgomery.

India Jones, a Columbus mother of two with another on the way says people need to be mindful of what they purchase, especially when it comes to their children.

” Technology has advanced so much, you’ve got webcams and stuff like that. I’m not trying to deal with those situations in my home, so I do it the old fashioned way,” said Jones.

Tim Beckett, President of Columbus’s BTM Solutions says with today’s technology, it’s easy to hack into someone’s webcam.

“If someone does hack into your system and you have a video camera that is active then they can stream it to wherever they want to stream it. On the computer system, you’ve also got something there called a firewall. Be sure that the firewall is set to strong. I know it’s a pain for people, but that’s just a part of our life now,” said Beckett.

Which is why if you purchase anything, take precautions.

“A lot of it is coming in through your internet service. So if you set your firewalls so they cannot get through your internet. And if you set your password strong enough so they can log into your wi-fi. The stronger that is, the more pad locks you’ve got, the more pad locks you’ve got, the more trouble they have to go through. The more trouble they have to go through, the sooner they’ll give up,” said Beckett.

Another option Beckett says to do is unplug your webcams or computers when you’re not using them.

Categories: Local News

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