r/homesecurity

I live in New Jersey. My neighbor’s house set up is that their driveway is on the side of their house. The side of my house has my bathroom window and my dressing room window. The camera is directly across from my bathroom and has view of my bathroom and dressing room window, especially dressing room window..
I keep searching the laws and it is saying that since it is the side of my house and I have a reason reasonable expectation of privacy because it is my bathroom and dressing room window. I called an officer and he scoffed at me saying he’s allowed to have security cameras. Another officer came and said that he’s allowed to have security cameras..
they also harass me by honking and shouting outside of my window, blasting music at 4 AM in their driveway. They stare at me when I come outside. They’re older son circles his bike right in front of my driveway. I found their mother pointing her phone like she was recording my home when I walk out another time I’m checking the recycling and she runs up behind me and startle me. There’s a lot going on from this house and nobody is listening to me.

I have a blackout curtains and I am pretty sure one night they caught me on camera. My cat moved my curtain up and was looking out the window so I’m assuming they saw inside two days ago. The curtain in my closet fell and that was my worst fear I always said what if my curtain falls and thankfully I just walked into the room. I wasn’t actually changing if I was changing, I would have been on his camera and he is a very creepy man when I confronted him, he was acting jittery, and he yelled at me.
I know their camera replacement is illegal, but nobody is listening to me. What do I do?

Prior owners installed a full, high end ADT system days prior to closing in order to get a certificate of occupancy, as the existing hardwired smoke detectors were not working. This was obviously an epic level brute force approach. I am guessing they are still paying for it. I was never consulted on any of it.

Since moving in, there have been a few false smoke detections in the basement, one of which got a police / FD response. To fix it, I would need to take over the ADT contract. Of course I'm not going to do something crazy like that.

I am technically adept, so I ripped out the ADT system and installed an IQ panel 5 / ADC based system (and love it). The ADT Resideo panel and about 35 rather nice prosix sensors are basically sitting uselessly in a box. What do I do with them? I suppose I own them since they were part of the house at close, but they are still tied to a contract that the prior owner is maybe still paying. Are there any risks to throwing the parts out?? Should I send them back to ADT?

Okay so, there is someone or someones stealing from my yard during the night but we don't have cameras yet.

What would be the best ones to get??

full scope of the yard, back and front, unable to be destroyed if found so maybe like a backup one for that camera???

motion and sound detection.

Just got set up with adt is $35 a month good for camera included services (3-4)

The padlock on my gate is gone without a trace and I suspect it might be an attempted burglary. My brother dismiss it saying that it fell off on its own and disappear. What my brother said made me second guess myself. Please share your experience on this.

The pitch was aggressive. The sales rep knocked loud as hell, like a cop. Woke up my pregnant wife and demanded she come down too. I told him she is staying upstairs and he can kick rocks if that is a problem. He congratulated me on the pregnancy and continued his pitch.

That said, with a baby on the way... I want my wife to feel safe when i am not home. Now and after our son is born. I would not have agreed to this had i known i was opening a $5000 line of credit. Partially my fault for not being assertive enough.

I wish the sales rep would have been more honest with me. I took the time to briefly read the contracts which seemed to upset him. I feel bad for the people that are being preyed on by these types of sales tactics.

He lied directly to my face and said that the loan he was trying to get me to sign was "not a loan." He had initially said that "there is no hard credit check with our line of credit partner *bread*" Then, shocker, it is actually a secondary credit provider that DOES do hard credit checks.

My dude, it says *THIS WILL REQUIRE A* ***HARD*** *CREDIT CHECK* right here. Which he pretended to forget was a thing, until that very moment, after assuring me that the loan installment provider (somehow not a loan) was "Bread" and that they did not do hard credit checks.

This is a loan for the equipment, clear as day. I don't care that it is "0% interest."

It isn't "free" or "included'" as he implied that it was. There are just no upfront costs if you take out the loan. I'm sure that those sales tactics are good for the company's bottom line, but it makes for a VERY bad public image. Honesty might not sell as well, but I am a very disgruntled customer. I WANTED the service and was going to get it anyway, you did not have to lie to me, ***Yousef***.

Unrelated to the Rep, the installer was a very pleasant softspoken man with neck tattoos. Loved him. Very kind and considerate.

All said: it is a moderately acceptable quality product that meshes with existing myQ garage door openers and google nest thermostats

Update #1: I called to cancel and was blatantly ignored and hung up on several times. I got to an indian call center, then a latino one, and at the third stage finally an american. They all aggressively tried to keep me on with promises of "$10 off for 12 months" or even "$300 off the first year." I told each of them that I was not interested in anything short of free equipment, as the original sales pitch promised. The third/final customer retention agent made it very clear that it (equipment cost waiving) couldn't be done and began the cancellation process for me. He personally promised me a full refund and that vivint will handle canceling my Fortiva Loan. Now I'm just waiting on a service tech to be scheduled to remove the equipment.

Update #2: Yousef saw this post in the vivint subreddit, had it deleted and he is very unhappy with me. I imagine the line was being recorded so he couldn't otright say it, but he was dancing around calling me a liar for saying what I did in this post, implying he was fully transparent from the very beginning. He was clearly upset about seeing this and worried about how it made his "team" look bad. He has now claimed that Vivint will transfer the loan to themselves and handle getting the fortiva line off of my credit. I told him what I told the rep who initiated my cancellation. No equipment cost or I walk. Supposedly he can make that happen, but I am highly doubtful. It is 3:30pm and he was supposedly calling back at 2pm. I have no intention of staying, but lets see if he can actually wow me with no equipment costs and no contractual obligation of any kind.

I have a Night Owl FTD4 dvr camera system. Every time I want to login to the dvr, it says something is incorrect and I must reset my password. Today it happened and my internet is experiencing an outage in my area so I can’t reset it without it. Now I can’t playback any recordings or do nothing until I reset the password again. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Just wanted to see which security systems cameras etc you guys have. I want a wired system which I know that would need new wiring etc installed.

I'm currently living in High point, NC. Kinda curious if hiring someone for marketing is good idea? I tried paid ads mostly Google ads but somehow I'm paid a lot than getting more leads that I should. We are small company and I'm too busy figure it out what's the best ad for my to work plus my installation schedule. To be honest I just want to have consistent leads, might be to grow sooner and now I'm trying to consider hiring someone to market my company. The thing is, is it worth it? am I getting the leads that I will pay for? Guys what are your thoughts?

We are somewhat savvy with our alarm system. I've done quite a few things with it and never had too many issues. This time, we went to replace one of our motion sensors with something a little more modern looking. Stupidly, we didn't unplug the alarm system first. My husband was trying to wire the new one and the wires touched. I'm not sure which ones, but definitely the gray and red (+ and -) ones did. The main keypad started going crazy beeping and flashing a bunch of trouble codes. It wouldn't respond to anything I entered into it. The other keypads were just dead. I unplugged the alarm and the battery and everything is now off. We checked the fuse on the Vista 20p panel with a multimeter and it seems to be ok. It also looks ok. Any other suggestions? Did we just fry our alarm system? 😞

ETA: I can plug in the transformer again and the main keypad will come up. I didn't get a chance to see if the others do before the main keypad started beeping and going crazy again, so I shut it down. Not sure if that tells us anything.

Hello i don't know if It Is the right su reddit, I Need something like a motion sensor for inside my car, i do some outdoor and from time to time people find their car opened.

There Is some kind of motion sensor/camera that notify me if someone is watching inside my car?

Thanks a lot

Hi, my friend hired a PI to do a full sweep of his property for hidden cameras, as he has his reasons to believe his neighbours have set one up in each of his rooms. I won't go into that.....

The full sweep revealed nothing. My friend feels that his neighbours were switching off the devices just before each room was swept.

I know how this sounds, but also, how pheasible is it for someone to be able to remotely switch off a device and would doing so cause it to be undetectable by professional equipment? Thank you.

Hi all,

I've been wanting to set up a couple of cameras around the house but don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on a dedicated NVR and new IP cameras just yet. I have a few old Android phones in a drawer and wanted to use them as cameras.

I found an app/NVR combo called NOX that apparently lets you run the NVR on a normal PC/Mac and turns phones into cameras instantly. It says the first 4 channels are free for life.

Has anyone heard of or used this? Does the phone connection drop often? I’m mainly wondering if it’s reliable enough for basic home monitoring or if I should just bite the bullet and buy cheap Reolink/Wyze cams. Any advice is appreciated!

Feels like a lot of system failures come from neglect rather than the actual technology itself

I've seen badly maintained wired systems become way less reliable than newer systems that actually get tested regularly

DO NOT BUY!!! This has been a nightmare. The equipment is faulty, there's hidden fees, they will not honor their contract and will weaponize the system against you.

Both cameras stopped working and I've been through 11 smoke detectors. The smoke detectors would malfunction in the middle of the night and I'd have to climb a ladder and get them down, remove the batteries, and call in the morning to get a tech out to replace them. 11 TIMES! They eventually said they changed equipment providers and wanted to charge me over $100 for a service call to replace their faulty equipment that was supposed to be replaced for free under the lifetime warranty. Since it was a breach of contract I terminated it. The rep was belligerent and yelling, and repeatedly told me he'd brick my system. A system I already paid for and was told that I now owned the equipment and could take with me should I move.

This morning when my husband tried to leave for work he couldn't disarm the panel, it was functional but it wouldn't allow him to disarm, holding us hostage in our own house. He had to leave for work which set the alarm off. I ended up taking the panel off the wall and putting it in a closet because ADT made sure there was no way to turn it off and no way to log into the system. 

I got this system because I had a stalker, but ADT has been far worse. I was told I "qualified" for some of the equipment to be free and was then charged anyway. Then even after completely paying for the equipment and being told I owned it and it belonged to me, ADT bricked it by making it impossible to turn off the alarm because I didn't wish to continue the monitoring service, since they were in breach of contract.

This has been a huge waste of time, money, and my sanity. All this in just a little over two years. After posting this review I'll be looking for any class action lawsuits I can join against ADT.

Hello! I am looking for a security system for our house. We want one doorbell camera, and one camera for back yard and one for side gate entrance. Preferably wired? Something that records any motion. For doorbell would like to be able to communicate 2 way via our phones, the cameras dont need two way communication but audio recording is needed. For storage, I have some high end PC's at home I could use as main storage to hold all the footage? Not sure how that works these days. Heard good things about Reolink? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I’m looking for a couple of wireless outdoor security cameras for my front door and driveway, but I’m trying to avoid anything that needs a monthly subscription just to see recordings.

I can run power to the cameras, but I can’t run ethernet to those spots, so they would need to work over WiFi. I’m not really looking for a full PoE/NVR setup right now.

Main things I care about:

1. decent night footage
2. local storage if possible
3. remote viewing from my phone
4. no required cloud plan
5. reliable motion alerts

I’ve seen some people mention older security/privacy issues with Eufy, and others complaining about ads or popups in the app. The Baseus X1 Pro duallens option also looks interesting, and Reolink still seems like the default recommendation, but I’m not sure what’s actually worth buying in the $150 to $250 range.

Any advice is appreciated.

I've been using SimpliSafe and Blink cameras for a while now and have noticed some concerning performance issues. At random, SimpliSafe won't record, goes offline after working constantly for 1 week. I need to know what home security camera brands are working for people because I'm not satisfied with either of the two I've been using.

WARNING / NEED ADVICE – My Vivint experience has turned into an absolute nightmare.

I signed up for Vivint after a door-to-door sales rep made several promises that either turned out to be false or were never properly honored.

Here’s what happened:

- I was told I would have continuous DVR recording included with my system.
- I was told I would not need to worry about alarm permits.
- I was pressured into a 60-month contract tied to Bread financing for equipment plus Vivint monitoring.

After installation:
- I found out the DVR/continuous recording was NOT actually included on my account.
- I started receiving compliance emails stating I WAS responsible for obtaining permits after being told otherwise by the salesman.
- The app performance and system reliability were already questionable.
- I started realizing the total cost was around $100/month all-in for FIVE YEARS.

During my rescission/cancellation window I told Vivint in writing that I intended to cancel unless they fixed the situation and honored what I was promised.

Instead of resolving it cleanly, they kept me tied up in endless “retention negotiations”:
- promising DVR,
- promising credits,
- promising extra cameras,
- escalating approvals,
- rescheduling appointments,
- etc.

I repeatedly received conflicting information from:
- sales,
- retention,
- support,
- technicians,
- and backend account notes.

At one point:
- I received WRITTEN confirmation approving retention concessions including DVR and credits,
- a technician arrived for the install,
- then spent 30–45 minutes on the phone because Vivint’s internal notes showed completely different terms than what I had in writing.

The tech himself admitted the situation was messed up and felt bad for me.

Then:
- appointments were missed/no-showed,
- billing continued,
- Bread financing payments started,
- and support kept bouncing me between phone support, chat support, and escalation teams.

Now I’m stuck in a situation where:
- I documented cancellation intent before the deadline,
- Vivint continued negotiating after the rescission period,
- they continued promising fixes and concessions,
- but they never cleanly finalized or honored the agreement consistently.

At this point I’m preparing:
- BBB complaint
- CFPB complaint
- Texas Attorney General consumer complaint

because this entire process feels intentionally exhausting and disorganized.

Has anyone successfully gotten out of a Vivint agreement after retention promises and conflicting written terms like this?