Tapo C200 Camera - Remote Acess and Security

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hasso

76 posts

Master Geek

#273190 9-Aug-2020 22:20

Hi...

I recently bought one of theses cameras and it works great. Too great perhaps. I installed the Tapo App on my iPhone and it allows me to monitor and control the camera remotely not just from my home LAN but also from the internet. The remote access from the internet was a surprise to me as I did not have to open any access/ports on my Internet router to permit this access from the internet. How does this happen and is there a way to block it? My aim is to permit this type of access only through my VPN. Thanks for any help.

Hasso.

richms

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#2537490 9-Aug-2020 22:24

Not all cloud cameras will work without internet access, but you can try putting it on its own vlan without internet access and see if you can still view it using its app. My yellow minion looking cameras will not operate that way, they need to get to their home server before anything will happen.

Richard rich.ms

hasso

76 posts

Master Geek

#2537492 9-Aug-2020 22:35

Thanks for the response. I’ll give this a go but I just don’t trust having my private camera video going through some third party. I’d prefer to block the traffic but am unsure how I am even able to access this camera from the internet given my router is supposedly blocking all incoming traffic ( aside from the VPN port). The camera must be sending some sort of keep alive message to the cloud service on some port.
Hasso

Lias

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#2537558 10-Aug-2020 07:49

Tapo is a TP-Link sub brand so I suspect it's using TPLink Cloud in the background.

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hasso

76 posts

Master Geek

#2544177 19-Aug-2020 08:08

The Tapo C200 does not have cloud storage as an option, but it still obviously communicates with the TP-Link "cloud" or else I wouldn't be able to access the camera (and video feed) through my firewall/router which has been setup to deny all incoming connections aside from my VPN port. Anyway, I have set up my firewall to block all outgoing and incoming traffic from/to the camera IP address. Now the only way I can access the camera is through the VPN which is what I wanted. I just feel a bit safer in knowing that the camera (and the video) is not able to be accessed through a third-party. I have heard too many stories of IP camera "hacking".

hasso

76 posts

Master Geek

#2544195 19-Aug-2020 08:40

I spoke too soon. As soon as I restarted the Tapo application, it showed the IP camera as "offline". The Tapo application obviously requires the camera to have access to the internet :-(. I can access the camera through Zoneminder, but there's no way of using the Pan and Tilt functionality except through the Tapo application.