A reputable, established company is much more likely to spend resources in the long-term to keep their product updated and secure. Other companies may get by with the bare minimum but won’t make a long-term commitment to keeping their product updated, making them less secure as time goes on. If the seller didn’t find security important enough to put on the box or product description, you can bet they didn’t find it important enough to put in the product. Smaller companies trying to compete on price will often not prioritize security. There’s not much you can do (and little need) to secure a wireless (non-internet) monitor, so the advice below really applies for internet-enabled/Wi-Fi cameras. How to keep your baby monitor as secure as possible Like any poorly-secured computer, a poorly-secured Wi-Fi camera might also be used by a hacker to gain entry (or “pivot”) into the rest of your home network. It’s important to understand that a ‘smart’ device is just another computer. (Not to mention the oodles of unsecured internet-enabled cameras that get hijacked for use in botnets – Mirai, anyone?) Yes, this might seem very unlikely, but there are a number of stories of hackers screaming at children through cameras, taking photos of kids and parents and using them for blackmail, or even using what they see in the cameras to scope out a house to burgle it later. Anyone with minimal tech know-how – and I really mean minimal – can find them, peep in on what they’re seeing, and perhaps even control the camera itself. Hacking, hijacking and botnetsĪn alarming number of poorly secured Wi-Fi cameras are connected to the internet. But that convenience comes with a big potential drawback: If it’s internet-enabled then it can be found and attacked by hackers and malicious software. It’s a perk many parents can’t imagine living without. Ultimately, an internet-enabled baby monitor allows parents to peek in on how their kid/elderly relative/dog is doing from the convenience of their phone. If you have a smart home (or at least a smart assistant or two), you can hook the baby monitor up to any number of your smart devices and chain several of them together to do all sorts of neat things, like using them to play back your favorite lullaby to your little one. Internet-enabled or Wi-Fi baby monitors have a number of really flashy perks. If you want a non-internet-enabled monitor and have a choice between analog and digital monitors, opt for digital. You’re more likely nowadays to find a digital monitor if you’re buying a monitor new.ĭigital wireless (whether audio or video or both) monitors use signals that are extremely unlikely to experience outside interference. So unless you’re concerned about someone physically sitting out on your front steps trying to listen in on your baby monitor, these baby monitors are a very good bet.Īnalog monitors are the cheapest option but prone to being interference, and because they’re notoriously noisy they’re also falling out of style. If someone were to try to hijack the signal coming from your monitor, they’d not only need to have some pretty decent radio frequency hijacking know-how, they’d also have to be in physical proximity to your baby monitor. Non-internet baby monitors may use either analog or digital wireless (not to be confused with Wi-Fi) signals, and these signals can’t be hacked over the internet. Non-internet-enabled monitors are basically fancied up walkie-talkies or cordless phones – once you’re out of physical range of the camera, usually about the end of your front yard, you can’t see what’s going on via the monitor. Cheaper versions can also be prone to receiving interference from other radio-emitting devices in your house, which nowadays is basically everything from your phone to your microwave. You can’t check in on how your kids are doing with the babysitter on the sly while you’re out on date night. Baby monitors that don’t use the internet don’t have the neat IoT-y bells and whistles.

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