Why We’ve Removed Our Wyze Home Security Recommendations at CNET

Take a look at our top picks for the best smart home products, and you will no longer find the Wyze brand among them. That’s a big shift compared to past guides where we’ve selected Wyze as an affordable, all-purpose home security brand for cameras, sensors and more. So what happened? We’d like to take time for a fuller explanation about Wyze’s current struggles with security and privacy, and why we’re changing our recommendations.

Over the past few years, Wyze has suffered from repeated data leaks and security breaches, including a 2019 user data leak, exposed databases in 2022, and exposed video files that same year. More recently, Wyze has seen breaches in both September 2023 and February 2024 that let at least 13,000 people see actual video footage from the Wyze security cams of other users.

So far, our attempts to contact Wyze for a statement on the matter have been unsuccessful. When addressing the latest February 2024 security flaw, Wyze forum representative WyzeDave noted that: “Our engineering team has added a new layer of verification between users and event videos to prevent this from happening again. We’ve also removed the client library and will not be using caching until we can find a new client library and stress-test it for extreme scenarios like we saw on Friday. This investigation is not wrapped up yet, we will continue to discuss as a leadership team and evaluate what needs to change to better protect our users.”

How CNET responds to home security breaches like these 

Wyze is far from the only smart home brand that has encountered security vulnerabilities and data breaches. While actual thieves trying to hack into your security cameras are rare to nonexistent, online theft of data is sadly common, which is why companies must notify customers when they find a security flaw or evidence of a breach. In past years, we’ve noted security problems with Eufy and data leaks with Ring, for example.

At CNET, when these problems appear we ask ourselves several important questions:

• How does the security issue directly affect users’ privacy or personal information?
• Does the company respond immediately with strong customer communication and effectively find a fix to the problem?
• Is the security issue an isolated incident, or is it part of a pattern of security flaws that have happened over time?
• How long has it been since the last incident? Has the company improved its approach to security to avoid vulnerabilities in their consumer devices?

These questions help us make determinations on whether to recommend a brand or product. Signs of improvement, better communication and time since the last reported security flaw are why companies like Eufy and Ring are currently on our lists.

Unfortunately, Wyze still struggles when examined via questions like these. The company continues to encounter repeated security flaws, while customer communication is limited to user emails and forum blog posts without broad, public-facing responses. The current Wyze response is better than those it has issued in the past, but we don’t see the marked improvement that we’d like to before recommending the brand again.

These issues aren’t simply vulnerabilities that were discovered and patched before problems could occur, but mistakes that included giving users images from homes other than their own — certainly not something a buyer wants to see in a security company. With privacy issues like these and a repeated pattern of flaws, we hesitate to suggest creating a Wyze account with your personal information, let alone using the company’s security cameras.

We will be watching Wyze’s situation over time and continue asking the questions posed above to see when and how things change. If Wyze products do start showing up on our lists again, we’ll let you know and explain why we’re willing to recommend them again.

You can still find cheap smart home tech with these alternatives 

Wyze has long been a leader in especially affordable smart home devices with great budget subscriptions. If they’re no longer a viable option, where can you look for cheap home security products? Start with our updated lists on cheap home security cameras and the most affordable home security systems for the best leads. 

If you’re interested in finding a particular brand, TP-Link’s Tapo devices are an excellent alternative with budget prices equal to Wyze and affordable subscriptions as well. The Blink Mini cam is also regularly available for $30 and can easily monitor a small room or indoor entryway.