You have a doorbell camera. You see the live feed. You get motion alerts. You feel safe. But if someone showed up at your door at 2 a.m., would that footage be there tomorrow?
Nancy Guthrie is 84 years old, the mother of Today show coanchor Savannah Guthrie. On Jan. 31, family dropped her off at her Tucson home. By morning, she was gone.
Her Google Nest camera should have been the first break in the case. Instead, it was the biggest frustration. No paid cloud subscription meant clips were overwritten within three hours. The most important footage to locate her? Poof.
📹 The FBI got lucky
Eight days later, the FBI released black-and-white footage of a person in a ski mask approaching Nancy’s front door. Armed. How’d they get it?
FBI Director Kash Patel said it came from “residual data” on Google’s backend servers. Digital breadcrumbs that hadn’t been fully erased. The task was so complex the FBI wasn’t sure it would work. They got lucky. If those servers had been wiped a few days sooner? Zero footage. Zero leads.
Right now, 52% of American households have at least one security camera.
Here’s my question: Do you have a paid cloud storage subscription? If the answer is no (or “I’m not sure”), your camera is basically live TV with no DVR. You can watch what’s happening in real time. But the moment something important happens and you’re not staring at your phone? It’s gone.
Plans start at $4.99 a month for Ring (180 days of cloud storage for one camera) and $10 a month for Google Nest (30 days, all cameras). That’s a couple of fancy coffees.
🔒 One camera isn’t enough
The intruder covered Nancy’s front door camera with a gloved hand and what appeared to be part of a plant. Disconnected it. One camera, one point of failure.
At minimum, you need cameras on your front door, back door and driveway. If one gets covered or knocked offline, the others keep rolling.
Open your camera app. Check your plan. If it says “Free” or “Basic” with no cloud storage, you’re not protected. You just think you are. Ten dollars a month. That’s the price of keeping 30 days of video evidence instead of zero.
Know someone with a doorbell camera who might not be paying for cloud storage? Forward this. It could be the most important $10 reminder they get all year.
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