In urgent need of security camera suggestions

[Raoul]

1 hour ago, analog_kidd said:

My first thought about the phone camera is to take some sandpaper to the lens. It'll ruin the camera, but it is your phone to ruin.

I would also look at the logs of your router to see if that gives any indication of her Internet activity, or if there are unknown devices connecting, such as a contraband cell phone or tablet. Every router I've seen has a list of connected devices in it somewhere. You can even set allowed MAC addresses, which will block everything else. See about pointing your router's DNS lookup to one of those safe site only DNS services. It'll block known bad sites, and should work for everything that connects to the WiFi. I used host files on our home PC's to reroute sites like Facebook to 127.0.0.1, or even better, some other site. Then play dumb when the page won't load. 

Most definitely lock down the router password. Nobody but you and the wife should know the password. And change it every so often. Don't forget about the guest network too. And look to see if the neighbors have anything that can be connected to, especially like the Xfinity or ATT guest connections.

Not as relevant today, but when my kids were young, the only PC with Internet access was in the living room, and there was a password on the PC. Kids did not get to use it unless we were in the room.

As long as they are acting out, a child needs to have no expectation of privacy. Search her room whenever you want. A friend of mine removed the door from his son's room for a while.

There's a load of good advice in this post.

[Raoul]

My wife and I raised 2 daughters. At the time cellphones were not as ubiquitous or sophisticated as today but we were nonetheless early adopters.

I remember wanting to be a popular parent, and I also remember realizing that at some point you can't be friends with your kids until you get them grown.

Don't back down, your daughter's life may depend on your actions.

[MacGyver]

MAC address filtering on the router is good.  If the device isn’t approved by you - it doesn’t connect to the network. 

We have a rule in our house.  No devices in bedrooms.  Period.  All phones (my wife and mine included) get charged in the main area of the house.  That makes it convenient to check it.  

I sat with a parent of a 13 year old a couple of weeks ago - trying to find her after she had gone missing. We were looking at her Instagram account from a forensic perspective - a secondary account she had opened after her parents found her previous one and shut it down.  This one had been open for just over 24 hours. There were 11 people she knew following this account. There were 1089 anonymous followers - in under 24 hours - many of whom turned out to be sex offenders - including the person we eventually found her with. 

We’re not going to put the internet back in the box. It’s here to stay - yet it is still remarkably immature. You’ve got to find a framework where you help your kids figure out that consumption - what’s okay, what we need to limit, and what we need to avoid at large.

Theres something else that I find myself saying with parents a lot when I lecture on this topic. “Our kids may or may not listen to us, but they never fail to emulate us.”

 

[shotgunshooter]

Search for Byron Childers on YouTube. He's done quite a few videos on cameras

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

[Murgatroy]

My daughter is nearing that age. I have rage reading this. I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, and OH MY LORD, I could have some fun with an eighteen year old legal adult without crossing the line of unlawful detention or assault and get my point well across. That doesn't make any of these thoughts or worries easier to digest.

 

I ride that fine line between Rodney Atkins and a full blown crazy outlaw biker. Say the word and I can come down to the Tri-Cities for a weekend and we can stay legal and instill the fear of god in some cats.

[n0rlf]

Having raised a daughter and had to live the issues with internet and phone I can sympathize. Not easy these days. Momma and I decided early on trust but verify was the key. We set boundaries and explained clearly what they were and the repercussions for crossing them. Having two older brothers helped a lot. They were protective while not getting involved. 

I am proud of all of my children as they seem to have grown up well. Some of the folks here have met my sons and I hope they have purported themselves well. That is one of the differences for us, we were raised in a different age. Back then any of our friends Mom's would have back handed is as needed and let our parents know about it. Now most of the time people are afraid to speak up at all. 

Good luck and hopefully it goes well. As for the 18 year old, well we had a chat with anyone that showed up to date our daughter. Informed them I was a pretty good shooter, showed them some of the videos of when I still shoot matches. Then informed them we were into reptiles, snakes, rats, lizards and such. That we had friends with alligators. Then showed them pictures. 

Only one of her dates ran off and even she admitted it was no loss as he was kind of a nervous Nate anyway. 

Through it all try to keep humour involved though. We found it helped break barriers and open communications. 

[abusfullofnuns]

This thread is making me sick to my stomach. I have 5 and 7 year old daughters. There are already tech savvy, and I’m already having to fight back the cell phone request from the oldest. It’s an easy “NO”, but is just the beginning. I absolutely dread these upcoming trials for my life, and wish you the best of luck. 

 

As a former miscreant, you probably only know a portion of the story. Stay involved and stay close. Good work, dad. 

[n0rlf]

28 minutes ago, abusfullofnuns said:

This thread is making me sick to my stomach. I have 5 and 7 year old daughters. There are already tech savvy, and I’m already having to fight back the cell phone request from the oldest. It’s an easy “NO”, but is just the beginning. I absolutely dread these upcoming trials for my life, and wish you the best of luck. 

 

As a former miscreant, you probably only know a portion of the story. Stay involved and stay close. Good work, dad. 

Like anything else best bet is to start early with known expectations and a lot of love. We have to fight so many outside influences it is difficult to say the least. 

Kardashians

Housewives of....

Jersey Shore...

Miley crazy

Brittany...

The list goes on and on. It is hard as parents to maintain any type of morals and ethics when our children see the junk online and on TV. It is difficult for our children to attend school or other functions without having the latest stuff to be cool. Seems that we have a lot of tough choices, the no brainer though is to love our children and provide them with reality checks about all of the ongoing drama they encounter.

Or send them to a convent and even that is not a concrete thing nowadays.

[Danger Rane]

I'm sorry to hear what you are going through Ronald, and I totally understand your frustration and concerns. Our oldest is my 16 year old stepdaughter who up until this last summer has kept us on our toes. She's was never a bad kid, but she's always been the type to be influenced by the here and now, with little thought to anything else but how to be popular. We held her off from pretty much all social media until she was 14, at which point she got an instagram account. Even though my wife had access to it and checked her phone almost nightly (it had to be on its charger in our room by 9 every night), I could see her change from the sweet/seemingly innocent girl she once was to one obsessed by how many people were "liking" the occasional picture my wife wold let her post, and she constantly chafed under the restrictions my wife gave her about what she could/couldn't wear in said pictures. As she turned 15 we caught her lying to us about communication and interaction with a couple boys we didn't know. Thankfully she wasn't great at covering her tracks or aware that I had been not that great a kid growing up so I knew where/how to flush out what was going on. We saved her from making some big mistakes but in the end it was for not as she chose to go live with her biological father this summer after he told her she would get a Lexus and the newest iPhone for her sweet sixteen. Hard to compete with that, not that we would have. It's been very hard on my wife to relate and wrap her head around what's going on with her daughter as she (my wife) has legitimately always been a good moral, modest woman. The daughter is now on every social media known to man, including the real wolf in sheeps clothing, Snapchat. Total garbage, nothing good about that app but they market the hell out of it to these young girls with all the filters, streaks, trophys, etc....I'll catch my wife near to tears sometimes when she sees what her daughter is posting and wearing (or not) in her pictures.

If you want to look into cameras checkout the 4 or 8 camera set by Nightowl at Costco. It will do pretty much everything you asked about in your OP and they run $300 and $500 respectively. I just helped my Dad install the 8 camera set at his church and they are super clear, and work great at night also.

Sorry for what you are going through, I feel for you. As others have said you have to bite the bullet and get ahead of it if at all possible. 

[wewoapsiak]

If you have a comcast router, make sure it isn't broadcasting a public Comcast wifi or she can just connect to that.  You have to ask comcast to turn that off if you do. 

I installed a Swann system at my inlaws, running cable and power to the cameras was a pain and I don't like the interface.  At my house I have turret, dome, and box POE cameras.  I know you don't want to cobble things together, but I would go POE again every time.  There are POE NVRs, I however use a cheap Dell desktop and POE network switches.  For recording I use Blue Iris, one time purchase to use with up to 64 cameras.  The app isn't great, but notifies you if you set it up that way, unfortunately it is another $10 charge.  So the $$$ adds up quickly  With BI I can open any computer in my home, or my smart tv, and look at my cameras.  While out I use the app.  I started with the VPN route, but I changing all the passwords on the cameras, blocking them from the internet directly, and not recording my bathroom is worth the possible risk.  Attached is a shot from the BI web browser interface, clicking on a desktop shortcut pops it up.

LTS cameras are rebranded Hikvision, Uniview are rebranded Dahua (I think).  I like my low hanging dome at my front door, but if you are hanging them high enough I would get turrets since there is less IR bleed.  The IR attracts bugs, you will get plenty of false alerts any route you go, circular bullets are worse for this since the lens is surround by the LEDS.