“Among the eight or so examples initially provided to Reddit are a handful of disturbingly clear images showing a sleeping baby, a security camera’s view of an enclosed porch, and a man seemingly asleep in a chair.”
On Reddit, a Xiaomi Mijia camera owner reported receiving still images from other random peoples’ homes when he tried to stream content from his camera to a Google Nest Hub. In response, Google removed Xiaomi’s integration with its smart home products such as Google Home and Nest.
Android Police broke the story today, and published some photos that are pretty horrifying, privacy-wise, if legit:
This issue was first reported by user /r/Dio-V on Reddit and affects his Xiaomi Mijia 1080p Smart IP Security Camera, which can be linked to a Google account for use with Google/Nest devices through Xiaomi’s Mi Home app/service. It isn’t clear when Dio-V’s feed first began showing these still images into random homes or how long the camera was connected to his account before this started happening. He does state that both the Nest Hub and the camera were purchased new. The camera was purchased from AliExpress and noted as running firmware version 3.5.1_00.66.
When attempting to access a video feed from his connected camera (as depicted in the video above), instead of the expected local video feed, he’s provided a random, occasionally partly corrupted black and white still image from another home. Among the eight or so examples initially provided to Reddit are a handful of disturbingly clear images showing a sleeping baby, a security camera’s view of an enclosed porch, and a man seemingly asleep in a chair.
In response, Google told Android Police:
“We’re aware of the issue and are in contact with Xiaomi to work on a fix. In the meantime, we’re disabling Xiaomi integrations on our devices.”