content: While I agree with you - the reason a lot of people do have these is because they prefer to have a way to check on their kids if they leave them at home with a sitter (make sure the baby is OK, make sure things are safe and going well at the house, etc...). If that isn't the case then keeping it to the local network is the most access you need, but if you need to check in from elsewhere you have to open a path into the network to do so. Of course there are ways to implement such a setup in a more secure way, but I'm saying this as a software/devops engineer so I wouldn't expect the average person to know how to do that shit properly or follow directions to do so by just Googling it. I mean - using a non-standard port, setting up a VPN, and only opening the firewall rules for the window-times you need to access remotely and then closing them otherwise.  Of course it doesn't help that most of this crap is made in China including the software underneath. It is usually thrown together with very little care as far as updates, testing, or security are concerned. (Hell half of these surveillance systems from there are probably intentionally left vulnerable to provide backdoor access).