I just read about this issue and wasn’t aware of it before today. It’s crazy that this bug could have ever existed.
My HomeBase 2 recently got an update for “1. Fix the existing BUG and improve system stability”. It’s on System Version 2.1.8.5h and Subsystem Version 1.3.0.9. (Not sure what’s the difference between System and Subsystem.) Not sure if this is the most recent update either as I understand Eufy does rolling updates so products get automatically updated at different times.
Does anyone know if the issue has been fixed in this update (or newer one if there’s one out there)? Unfortunately, I don’t want to test the issue on my cameras as I want to keep my current recordings and not risk losing them.
You are on the latest Homebase update and no they haven’t fixed the major flaw. I have given up hope that anythng will ever get done about this unless they get taken to court. Its been almost 10 months since this flaw was first discovered and nothing but stalling and “we are working on it” from Eufy. They had a partial fix rolled out, but then rolled it back and never communicated anything to those of us that had tickets.
This is fixable but they obviously would rather keep rolling out new crap with the same flaws and ignoring their customers. The only solution is vote with your feet and don’t buy any more Eufy gear until they fix it.
Thank you to @preset and rhy33 for your efforts on this.
Your thorough analysis of the issue and painstaking follow up with Eufy has saved me from this terrible product.
I purchased it today and will be returning it tomorrow.
I did hours and hours of research before my purchase and never saw mention of this issue until I installed the app on my phone and found the thread here.
As a Product Manager for a major electronics company, I can truly appreciate your efforts here. Shame on Eufy for their lack of urgency, follow up, and follow through.
I’m wondering if the anti theft alarm feature on the cameras can help mitigate the issue. Is it easy to press the sync button without triggering the alarm?
I guess the other thing to hope for is “security by obscurity”. Maybe most criminals aren’t up to speed on this major issue and won’t take the time to recognize a eufy camera and how to exploit it.
Another thing is that most cameras are placed high enough to require a ladder to get to. But I guess criminals could try to knock down the camera first and then delete recording using the sync button.
Unfortunately, I’m pretty heavily invested in the Eufy ecosystem of indoor/outdoor cameras. Are there any other battery powered wireless cameras that have local recording that’s not stored on the camera but on something like a HomeBase? That’s pretty much the main reason why I originally went with Eufy (at least for their outdoor cameras).
@dslai The anti-theft feature can help, but if the individual knows what they’re doing…then in 10 seconds everything they did will be erased. If this is done in the middle of the night, you’ll wake up to a stolen camera and no footage.
Like you, I have invested heavily in Eufy’s products and am disappointed that they have not fixed this issue. I griped about this major flaw since last January and it was escalated by others…but in Eufy’s usual fashion, not much accountability. However, they will continue to flood the market with more items instead of fixing something like this.
“Are there any other battery powered wireless cameras that have local recording that’s not stored on the camera but on something like a HomeBase?”
I’m currently testing Arlo Pro 4 (which doesn’t require a hub but only stores to cloud if no hub used) and I can confirm that they have their smart hubs as well. The videos are stored on the hub if no cloud subscription is active. Their system is far from perfect too but at least they don’t suffer from this pretty much catastrophic “feature”.
I still got 2,5 months left on my free cloud subscription there and once that runs out, I need to decide whether to dump Arlo all together or either buy the hub or start paying for the cloud. I’d prefer eufy but if they can’t even fix this “reset issue” I’m pretty sure they won’t fix other bugs/issues either.
So I have sent an email request about this issue at https://support.eufylife.com/s/emailcontactus. I had to specify the inquiry type to be Feedback as choosing “Need Help with My Product” wouldn’t allow me to complete the request (some problem with their web site). I’m curious what their response will be, and I hope everyone who cares about this issue does the same.
Reading thru this thread, I see that @preset had created an email request before on this issue. @preset, can you share what was the last response Eufy sent you about your support request? Wondering if you followed up to see what they had to say after implying that a fix would be ready in several months.
I just bought eufy’s one-stop home security solution kit, their battery video doorbell and 2x eufycam 2 in a black friday deal. After reading this thread I will be returning all products. Their lack of care and communication is mind boggling.
The last response I got is posted in this thread along with the ticket number. After the last excuse that they needed more time 5 or 6 months after their fix was due, I quit checking. I assumed that they were just stringing the issue out , hoping it would go away. They never communicated what they were doing and when I tested one of their newer cams that had the same issue, I gave up.
I’m so disappointed. After researching for weeks I finally made the decision to purchase the S40 and a set of 2c Pro cameras and home-base today, only to come across a thread about this by chance at the last minute. I’m glad I did. I was about to invest a lot of money in something with such a critical flaw, and I can see that you have all been working at trying to get a resolution for nearly a year, which is not cool for an issue so critical. Thanks to everyone who has been championing this battle, and sorry to those who have already invested - I hope your campaigning here, via tickets, and on social media pays off very soon. I will not be purchasing and now have to find something else that appears as good. What a simple mistake for them to have made…
Here’s the initial reply to my email request about this issue.
I am deeply sorry about all inconvenience caused to you. If this bad scenario really happens, your data will still be safe as the data is bound to your account. Without your account information, no one can see your videos. But I am deeply sorry that if the camera has been reset, the device will be deleted from the account. Then you are not able to check the local recordings. But if you subscribe the cloud storage, you are still able to check the cloud storage even it has been stolen.
I then replied to this stressing the seriousness of this issue and asking if there was a plan to address it. I also asked for clarification if recordings would be retained on the cloud after a camera was reset. I got the following reply.
We fully understand your concern, and we have forwarded your concern to our back-end engineers. Please give us some time, and we will try our best to improve it. As for the cloud storage, yes, you are still able to check the recordings even the camera has been reset.
If anyone has cloud storage and is willing to test, please confirm if what they are saying about recordings being retained on the cloud after a camera is reset is accurate or not.
More BS. Their backend engineers have known about this issue for almost a year and done nothing. Just more empty promises from Eufy.
My guess is that cloud storage will go away as well when the cameras are reset, but I’m not willing to shell out more money to test it. The videos still exist on your storage until the garbage collector runs, but since the record key is deleted, they can’t be retrieved by the app. Not sure why that would be any different for cloud storage. The app still needs a key to find and decrypt the videos.
Bought a L40 Solocam to try it out (mainly for its spotlight feature). Was able to reproduce the sync issue with this camera. All videos from the camera could not be seen anymore after holding the sync button for about 10 seconds (and hearing the double beep), and the camera was removed from my devices list. Even after adding the camera back to my device list, the prior recordings from it still cannot be seen so looks like they are gone for good. After adding this camera, I got a notification from the Eufy app about “Formatted microSD card successfully” for its built-in storage so this probably explains why.
This L40 camera also doesn’t have any anti-theft feature. I like the spotlight feature to have color video at night, and it looks brighter than I thought it would be for 600 lumens at max brightness. But I think I’m probably going to return this as I don’t think I can mount this high enough to mitigate the chances of someone stealing the camera or exploiting the sync issue to reset the camera.
This is my first experience trying a Solocam. I noticed a difference in the setup between this vs my Eufy 2 Pro cameras. When adding this Solocam, during the setup process after pressing the sync button as instructed for a couple seconds, the app generated a QR code and asked me to point the camera at it to scan. This basically added the camera to my account (my Eufy 2 Pro setup didn’t involve scanning a QR code). Why not do something similar if someone is trying to reset the camera using the sync button? If the camera has already been registered to an account, the owner’s app can generate another QR code that the camera needs to scan to confirm that the camera should be reset.
@Mengdi, your last post in this thread was 9 months ago. Do you or anyone from Eufy have an update on this issue? Probably you’re not going to respond because you’re just hoping the issue goes away and don’t want to deal with it. But there are several suggestions in this thread to try to solve this major issue because your customers care a lot about it. Can you or someone in Eufy respond in kind as to what your company’s position is on this? Even if the position is something like “we’re not going to fix it”, at least it will bring some closure to the discussion and help us in our future purchasing decisions.
Solution is easy - we have to let folks know about this issue - anyone looking for a security camera who knows about this issue will go elsewhere. Eufy either fixes it or is driven out of the security cam business. Whenever I see folks talking about purchasing these cameras in consumer forums I point them to this thread. They either don’t purchase or return them if they have recently purchased. Folks need to prompt tech forums / blogs like Gizmodo and Engadget to write a story on the issue.
I read through this whole thing hoping to find that it was resolved in the past year. Very disappointed it is not resolved. I guess I have a bunch of stuff to return.
This is ridiculous if they haven’t fixed it in 9 months. Guess I am returning the 2C Pro Kit, PTZ and Solo Solar cams and all the solar panels. Sucks I have to take it down, but the whole point of the homebase is to have a backup elsewhere.
I was looking at Eufy and was literally about to buy the 2C kit, then came across this thread. Not a chance in hell I’ll be buying a camera that can be reset by a potential thief. Also shows how shoddy Eufy support or development ‘appear’ to be. I emailed support about this, their response:
"Thank you for your reply.
I am deeply sorry that if the camera is stolen. It is not possible to add it back, and the recordings are not able to be viewed. But if you subscribe to the cloud storage, the cloud storage recordings will still be there"
So this is not patched so that people sign up to paying a monthly fee for storing local data, to their cloud subscription? No thank you Eufy.
PS does this affect all Eufy outdoor camera products?..
It affects all their cameras, indoor and out plus their entry sensors. Prettry lame that they won’t fix it. Its been over a year since it was reported and they told us they were working on a fix. They have just ignored the issue and kept producing new gear with the same faults. Unfortunately, none of the major reviewers will call them on the issue. I wrote a review on Amazon and it was never posted. Others have talked to some of the Youtube reviewers and they are all scared they will get sued for giving an honest review. Eufy doesn’t care, they just keep producing flawed junk.
Starting to look like this is not just a bug they won’t/can’t fix but may be a misguided attempt to have folks pay for their cloud service. Most folks like me got into the Eufy eco-system due to the feature that the video was stored locally on the homebase - a feature many of us learned too late is garbage if a thief can simply delete the video. Has anyone tested if the video stored in the cloud service is still accessible after a camera is reset? I’ll be moving back to my Blink cameras and folks likely shouldn’t keep holding their breath for a fix - certainly no one should invest in Eufy moving forward given this issue.
