Five days from Wednesday, Savannah Guthrie is set to return to The Today Show, and in the two months since the disappearance of her mother, Nancy Guthrie, there’s been a lot of interest in doorbell cameras and the video that they capture.
Consumer Reports is investigating where that doorbell footage is stored and who has access to it.
They’ve been around for years, yet many of us might not realize how they work behind the scenes.
Most video doorbells capture footage from wherever they’re mounted and send it to the manufacturer’s cloud-based servers. And in most cases, you need a monthly subscription to save and access those recordings.
“Usually, with most cameras, when you are recording, and it goes to the cloud, but you don’t have a subscription, the recording is not saved,” said Dan Wroclawski with Consumer Reports. “It might temporarily get stored on the server, but it is eventually deleted.”
In rare situations, companies can still recover footage scheduled for deletion, which may have happened in the Nancy Guthrie case. But that process can take a lot of time and effort—and isn’t something you should rely on.
Many consumers prefer cloud storage, partly because it’s convenient and offers extra features. Others prefer cameras that store footage locally to keep their videos as private and secure as possible.
Most cameras with local storage use a microSD card inside the camera itself.
CR also suggests another less common option for local storage.
“Your safest thing to do is get a model that has a separate hub or base station that the microSD card goes into, and you can place that somewhere else in your house that’s far away from the camera,” Wroclawski said.
Local storage usually means no monthly fees and more control over your video, because police would have to come directly to you for the footage rather than go to the manufacturer.
Those are two reasons Dan is moving away from cloud-storage cameras at his own home.
“If I were to do this all over again, I absolutely would go with cameras that use local storage,” Wroclawski said.
These doorbells and cameras with both local and cloud storage options did well in Consumer Reports’ ratings because when it comes to your family’s safety, where your footage lives could make all the difference.