The footages of security cameras fitted inside houses are not secured to the owners in Britain, and can rather be viewed by the 'home hackers' on a website, according to an investigation by Daily Mail.
The investigation reveals that 'home hackers' are spying on the day-to-day activities of people through cameras installed in their homes, reports Daily Mail.
The reality of hacking was exposed on Sunday when the daily watched an internet website, which is accessible to everybody, for two hours last week. The footages, which they saw were from different British locations.
The website was displaying the footages of babies in cots, a boy playing on his computer at home, another boy sleeping, the inside of a Surrey vicar's changing room in church, an elderly woman in an armchair and two men in a kitchen sharing a meal.
The Daily Mail reports that devices including CCTV units, baby monitors and domestic security cameras can be hacked by changing the factory-set default security codes that every camera has within it.
Such things happen when the owners fail to change the default passcode after buying the devices and in UK around 3,50,000 people purchase these cameras every year.
Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert, who heads the Home Affairs Committee that scrutinises internet crime, told the daily on Sunday, "It's absolutely shocking. We should get the companies, which sell this, to force customers to change default passcodes," he said.
These cameras are mostly bought by parents to keep an eye on their kids. They don't know that thousands of people might be spying on them at any one time, said Professor Alan Woodward, a cyber security specialist.
According to a technology expert, Shawn Day, there was a camera in one office and he could read the screen of a computer in an office. If any private information would be on the screen then it was readable.
"It's not just the creepy feeling that you are being seen, which is the main concern, it's also the content of what is being seen," he said.
