this maybe a question you get all the time but, do you ever encounter something disturbing or unsetting while searching through these open cameras?
Hello! Actually, I don't think I've been asked it before.
I can't recall coming across anything disturbing or particularly unsettling. A lot of things I'd consider interesting or perplexing, though.
When I first got into this as a hobby many years ago, there was this lingering thought that I might see something shocking; a lot of CCTV cameras are around to monitor areas encase something happens, and I was big into Number Stations as a teenager so the idea of something being broadcast constantly like that that might be hiding something or suddenly change to something shocking really primed my brain to assume eventually I'd come across something like that. But so far, it hasn't happened.
I have sometimes come across cameras which have been defaced to have threats or offensive messages on them (often racist messages), from the perspective of the person or organization who owns/manages the camera it would be very unsettling, but a lot of these are on cameras systems with infamously poor security, so the messages are likely left by edgy people who think they're l33t hackerz because they can look up what a default password is.
I think the only one that's caught me off guard is this one here, it's far from unsettling but it was surprising to find a person hanging out in the middle of the road at 5 AM, and it's probably one of my favourites. This was taken via a really janky Python program I made that takes a list of IP cameras and takes an automatic screen grab of frame upon connection, so by the time I saw it, it had already been a few hours, so I don't know if the person was crossing the road, walking along it, or just standing there.
