Amazon selling creepy hidden spy cameras disguised as boring home accessory | Tech News

Amazon is selling one of the creepiest items you will come across this Christmas.

What looks like a very dull home accessory is in-fact concealing a hidden spy camera.

Recording devices have been built into clothes hooks, which at first glance wouldn’t appear to be anything more than something to hang your jacket or towel on.

A quick search on the major online shopping website brings up multiple variations of hidden cameras built into clothes hooks.

Many of the products available are described as being for ‘security, anti-theft and evidence collection’ purposes.

One even says: ‘Hidden in every corner. No matter where it is, it won’t attract attention.’

Just last month, a man was shocked to find a ‘creepy webcam’ nestled into a sofa at an Airbnb.

Dozens of different spy cameras are still up for sale on Amazon, despite one firm being sued over the gadgets, reports the BBC.

A judge in the US recently ruled that the retail giant will be hauled to court after a woman claimed she was secretly filmed in a bathroom by a clothes hook camera bought on Amazon.

The woman says she was staying at a home in West Virginia as an exchange student when she noticed the host’s motion-activated spy camera in August 2021.

She alleges that she was a child at the time and the man accused of recording her is facing trial. 

Her complaint to a US District Court says Amazon ‘approved the camera for sale’ and ‘approved the camera’s product description’.

The complaint reads: ‘The description shows the camera serving as a towel hook with the caption: “It won’t attract any attention. A very ordinary hook.”’

It’s also alleged that the use of the camera was ‘foreseeable to Amazon’ and seeks punitive damages against Amazon Inc, Amazon.com Services LLC and other unnamed defendants.

According to a privacy expert, the misuse of these types of devices may break British laws. 

Jaya Handa, a privacy partner at law firm Pinsent Masons, told the BBC: ‘Given the expectation of privacy within the home, individuals could be committing a crime under a number of other legal frameworks including harassment, child protection, voyeurism, sexual offences or human rights laws.’

She added that if videos were then broadly shared, there could also be data protection issues.

In the BBC’s investigation into the different types of cameras being sold on Amazon, it found:

• An alarm clock hidden camera with an illustration showing footage being viewed on a phone of a clothed but amorous couple on a bed.
• A camera disguised as a USB charger which has an image which shows it filming a couple indoors in a romantic embrace.
• A camera hidden inside a smoke alarm which claims it could be used to help ‘monitor’ an ‘unfaithful partner’.

When Metro.co.uk searched Amazon for a ‘clothes hook camera’, at least five different items fitted with cameras were available.

Earlier this year, the tech giant was forced to pay a £23million settlement for privacy violations over Ring doorbell cameras and Alexa devices.

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