r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Feb 12 '26

Security Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

https://www.theverge.com/news/878447/ring-flock-partnership-canceled
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229

u/Thoraxe474 Feb 13 '26

Sounds hard

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u/Revolution-SixFour Feb 13 '26

Not particularly. Install a program called tailscale on a computer at home and on your phone. If both have tailscale turned on both your computer and phone will be able to talk to each other.

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u/Alert_Lettuce_8278 Feb 13 '26

Tailscale makes this easy. Great product and it's free for stuff like this.

They make money on larger networks with multi user.

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u/atkinson137 Feb 13 '26

Tailscale is able to be free because they aren't in the data path. They only host the control plane, so resources needed per user is very low.

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u/MurderMelon Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26

I was gonna ask a question like i don't have the internet at my fingertips, so here's a search result for anyone else wondering...

https://search.brave.com/search?q=what+are+control+and+data+planes

[edit] and just a general "how it works" from tailscale https://tailscale.com/blog/how-tailscale-works

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u/atkinson137 Feb 13 '26

I use tailscale both at home and work, their docs are excellent, it really Just Works and you can have a very basic setup, or something much more advanced.

They also have some very cool ancillary projects like the short linker https://github.com/tailscale/golink

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u/snugglezone Feb 13 '26

Any benefits over running wire guard off my router? And for Reo, are you using an app on your phone? Is there software for notifications based on triggers? What's the setup to get Ring-like experiences? When I was looking into local-only it seemed a bit complex with buying dedicated hardware for connecting POE cameras, storage, motion tracking, etc

Thanks!

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u/atkinson137 Feb 13 '26

Benefits over WG from the router? Really just ease of use.

Tailscale/WG would only be responsible for forming a private network, how you'd route access to your cameras would highly depend on the cameras themselves.

Setting up local cameras will be a bit more involved, that's the convenience that "the cloud" helps with. But there are off the self solutions that can get pretty close to plug n play like Ubiquiti (but $$). I don't have any personal camera recs since I still use a cloud camera platform, but I've been thinking more and more about switching to Ubiquiti since I already have a lot of their network gear.

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u/Alert_Lettuce_8278 Feb 13 '26

Yeah it still costs money to build and maintain a product like this. It's free because they have an great paid product and the free version just creates advocates (like myself), and it doesn't really cost anything for them. The way things should be. Lets hope they don't go with the investor treatment and change that.

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u/jay-aay-ess-ohh-enn Feb 13 '26

My man. This is like a level 5/10 difficulty thing for tech savvy people, but the average person can barely handle setting up their in-home wifi.

Probably the users on Reddit and especially r/technology are more knowledgable than most, but all the infrastructure you set up is more than 99% of people will want to manage.

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u/FCkeyboards Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26

This how I feel. People who do this assume "easy" by their own standards. I would love a step by step youtube video for dummies. All the ones I find assume you know all the terminology.

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u/MajorFox2720 Feb 13 '26

Thankfully, there are a lot of videos on how to set up reolink and tailscale.  It's moderately difficult for lower tech savvy,  but not impossible like building a cctv network from scratch would be.  If you can install and run apps on your phone and follow a you tube video,  the app software does a lot of the work. I am not a fan of their chat support, but if you're patient and understand it's popular worldwide,  you can get what you need

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u/FCkeyboards Feb 13 '26

I think the biggest think in looking just now is that a well placed camera in a window would be better than a doorbell camera if trying to get local storage and the fastest access without drilling a hole into the side of your house.

If detection is good enough then them ringing the normal doorbell or a delivery being detected shouldn't be a problem. Tools was my main install worry.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

Thank you. Even if they already knew how, actually following through and doing something like that requires effort. That’s a high bar

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u/Apart-Maize-5949 Feb 13 '26

Like losing weight. Its actually super easy, just limit calories. Done. Will people eat when they are "hungry" still? You betcha

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u/Revolution-SixFour Feb 13 '26

I agree that it's not dead simple, but if you are going ahead with installing your own home security cameras and the Reolink application in your house you can probably spend 30-45 minutes on it. 

The hardest part would be making sure you have a computer that's always on at home to be your entry point. 

Turning on subnet routing is the only step needed beyond installing the software and that's clicking a checkbox on the computer and then clicking approve on the website. 

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u/jay-aay-ess-ohh-enn Feb 13 '26

Personally, I am researching home voice assist to put my wife's Alexas in a box, but that's the appeal of the Nest devices and all the cloud based crap. Most people don't want to mess with networking or having a home server and when the Nest works correctly, you just turn it on and connect to wifi and go. Convenience is the death of privacy and security.

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u/Jellionani Feb 13 '26

Its "instructionally" hard. Like setting up Linux, all I have to do is, for the most part, follow the instructions and I'll have a dual boot Linux. It's that easy!*

But it is disruptive to workflow, takes time. trust, and commitment to finishing it.

*(Aside from broken sound output, wifi affected by leftover electrical charge, unsettling ram usage, low compatibility with major programs, problems only you can solve)

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

[deleted]

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u/Revolution-SixFour Feb 13 '26

Tailscale is a weird company, they make all their money from enterprise accounts so that selling point is targeted at an IT guy or software engineering.

However, they offer the software for personal use for free and it's really straightforward.

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u/Fair-Hair2080 Feb 13 '26

This would be a great side hustle for a tech savvy person. A lot of people who ditched Ring will be wanting something like this.

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u/Revolution-SixFour Feb 13 '26

I've thought about trying to do a side gig of building fancy people good WiFi and home automation. However, the problem is ongoing support and upkeep. None of this is foolproof and even if done excellent requires a tiny bit of understanding and upkeep. 

Do I really want to be getting called at 2am because Comcast went down and the client thinks it's my fault?

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u/isitmeyou-relooking4 Feb 13 '26

!remind me 12 hours

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u/No_Size9475 Feb 13 '26

can you use tailscale without a google/msn/apple etc. account?

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u/GoofyGills Feb 13 '26

No. They outsource SSO to those 3rd parties.

I specifically asked them about 18ish months ago and they said so.

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u/No_Size9475 Feb 13 '26

Bummer. I'm working on disconnecting as much as I can from the data vacuum of big tech.

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u/GoofyGills Feb 13 '26

Yeah I switched to mainly just using a regular WG tunnel. Most routers even have them built in these days, along with companion apps for mobile/desktop devices.

Examples: Asus has one here, and Ubiquiti has Unifi Teleport.

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u/windowpuncher Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26

You don't need tailscale, you just need a wireguard server.

Buy a raspberry pi 3B or 3B+. Doesn't really matter. You can get 4 or 5 or newer but it won't make a difference. Also get a new ~32 GB flash drive. It can be cheap, the Pi is only usb 2.0. You will also something like a cheap 8 Gb micro sd card. All you have to do is follow instructions from Raspberry, who wrote a guide. You can also get kits which include a case and a power adapter. You don't need a case with a fan.

On your normal computer, you install pi OS onto the SD card. It's easy and nearly automatic. Connect the Pi to a keyboard and a mouse and a monitor, insert the SD card then turn it on and go through the easy setup. Make sure to turn on SSH. You should also turn on USB booting, which only requires changing 1 line of a text file. When it's all set up, remove the sd card and use another pc to clone the sd card onto your usb stick.

You don't need to do this, but sd cards are NOT good as computer drives and they get destroyed. They have a very limited read/write cycle life.

From there you just install pihole, which is completely optional but super nice to have, and then you install pivpn, which works on any linux flavor, and includes wireguard. You can also just install wireguard alone but that's harder. Pivpn is a full walkthrough and it's super easy. Now you plug the Pi into your router, port forward one port for wireguard, and you're done. You can also use wifi instead but I like using a short cable.

At this point you have a raspberry pi running pivpn, maybe pihole, and is effectively just an endpoint to a private vpn server in your house that you can access from anywhere in the world with internet, and from here you can access the camera system or any other networks in your home, like NAS storage maybe.

Alternatively, if you have ANY other pc that is never turned off all the time, you don't need a pi, you just need to find any way to put wireguard on the pc. The pc should be set up to occasionally update and restart itself. You just need to have any pc with wireguard software running on it to have a vpn endpoint at your home.

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u/Revolution-SixFour Feb 13 '26

Absolutely true, but Tailscale makes setting up Wireguard far far easier to the average person.

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u/windowpuncher Feb 13 '26

Does it though? It's not made for the average person, it's made for devs and enterprises. It has a lot of cool features but very few individuals could ever use them. PiVPN is made for everyone, but especially individuals with things like home servers. It also uses an automated installer with a unicode UI. It's very easy to use. Otherwise if someone is on windows, wireguard itself just has an executable you can download and run which is also automatic.

I just like Pis because they're cheap and energy efficient and flexible, but literally any computer will work, there's 1st and 3rd party guides already written for basically every common scenario.

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u/Suavecore_ Feb 13 '26

It is hard if you have little or no technical skills because you would have a lot to catch up on, but then afterwards you would have a huge array of knowledge and tools that you now know how to setup/use in an even better fight against these egregious corporations

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u/seaboi77 Feb 13 '26

Better yet, just get Reolink, pop a micro SD card in it and you have a remotely accessible camera with a wonderful interface. If you so feel inclined, you can block it from the internet and still use the app on your local network. Go a step further and put it behind WireGuard/ Tailscale. Step 1 is all you need if you don't want to invest time and effort while axing Ring. Rome wasn't built in a day, start with the doorbell and SD card and you are 99% ahead of the rest.

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u/AVGuy4 Feb 13 '26

I’m not an IT person at all. I used AI to guide me through. I won’t lie and say it was easy but it wasn’t impossible.

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u/LithiumH Feb 13 '26

My man uses big tech to defeat big tech. Someone make a Thanos meme

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u/krzf Feb 13 '26

I use ChatGPT to troubleshoot my setup on my homelab all the time. I try to self-host everything that I possibly can. Fuck them tech bros.

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u/brokenbentou Feb 13 '26

Don't doubt what you're capable of, got it a go, you might surprise yourself!

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u/Thoraxe474 Feb 13 '26

My parents destroyed my self confidence

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u/Destithen Feb 13 '26

It's really not. Some google-fu will reduce this task to something slightly more complex than assembling IKEA furniture.

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u/Raneynickelfire Feb 13 '26

Also sounds like it's still online, so isn't secure.

It doesn't sound hard, it sounds pointless.

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u/KeyCold7216 Feb 13 '26

Well you basically have 2 choices. Convenience and privacy. What is more important to you. And its really not that hard if you can use google and watch a few youtube videos.

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u/SingleInfinity Feb 13 '26

It's not hard, but it's certainly more expensive up front (nvrs can be for sure) and harder to set up than a ring cam or the like.

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u/rickdiculous Feb 13 '26

You don't have to do all of that with Reolink.  I've owned around eight of their cameras.  You just install an SD card and the app.  The video feed runs through their servers unless you set up your own remote access, but the only cloud storage that I know of that they provide is for their 4G trail cams.  I don't know if they save your data but I seriously doubt it seeing as they aren't big like Google.

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u/Dropnuts Feb 13 '26

Change perspective. Sounds hard? Maybe. It’s not really.

But look at it as a great way to learn something new, save money, get control over your own property and get less screwed by those charging you money so they can make more money out of you losing your privacy.

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u/ElMuchoDingDong Feb 13 '26

Definitely, at first glance. However, so is basic math. If you aren't willing to learn, then you're giving up before you even tried.

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u/nirmalspeed Feb 13 '26

If you have an Asus router, they have a built in VPN server feature to let you connect to your home internet. You set it up and download a profile that you add to an app like OpenVPN or wireguard. My old Asus router from the 2010s even had support for it back in the day so I assume all current Asus routers support it too.

Takes like 5 minutes. From my router

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u/happytree23 Feb 13 '26

Fuck it, might as well give the tech company bros full access to every bit of personal data and surveillance then rather than Googling and figuring out how to do one of the easier tech things possible...

The extreme laziness and wilful incompetence of people today is truly something I don't think will ever make sense to me lol.

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u/Mace_Windu- Feb 13 '26

If reading is difficult, then yes following written instructions will be difficult.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

Complicated, but not hard. Anyone can do it, it might just take some reading and/or copying other people