Earlier this year, Anker, the company behind Eufy security cameras, offered its users money in exchange for videos of package and car thefts. The security camera maker said it would pay customers two dollars per video to train its AI systems to better detect thieves. The company stated it was looking for videos of both real and staged events to ensure it had enough data. It even suggested users could create events by pretending to be a thief, noting that one act captured by two cameras could be efficient. The company mentioned that staging a car door theft might allow a user to earn eighty dollars. Eufy wrote that the data from staged events is used only for training its AI algorithms and for no other purposes.
This initiative shows that companies are willing to pay for user data they find useful for training AI models. While this allows users to get value from their own data, it involves security and privacy risks. For example, last week TechCrunch found that Neon, a viral calling app that paid users to share recordings of their calls, had a security flaw. This flaw allowed users to access any other user’s data. After being alerted to this security lapse, Neon went offline.
Eufy’s campaign offering two dollars per theft video ran from December 18, 2024, to February 25, 2025. More than 120 users responded on the campaign’s announcement page saying they participated. The company’s goal was to collect 20,000 videos each of package thefts and of people pulling car doors. Users could participate by filling out a Google Form to upload videos and provide their PayPal account for payment. Eufy did not respond to requests for comment on how many users participated, how much money was paid, how many videos were collected, or if the videos were deleted after training.
Since then, Eufy has run similar campaigns to incentivize customers to send videos. Through another in-app campaign called the Video Donation Program, Eufy offers rewards ranging from an Apprentice Medal, which is a badge in the app, to gifts like cameras or gift cards. For this campaign, Eufy is only asking for videos involving humans. The Eufy app also shows an Honor Wall ranking users who have donated the most videos. The top user on this ranking has donated 201,531 videos. In the app, Eufy clarifies that donated videos are only used for AI training and improvement and will not be provided to third parties.
Eufy also asks users to donate videos recorded with the company’s baby monitors. A support page detailing the steps to share these videos does not mention any monetary reward. Eufy did not respond to questions about this particular initiative.
There are reasons to doubt Eufy’s commitments to user privacy. In 2023, it was revealed that the company tried to cover up that users’ camera streams were unencrypted when accessed through its web portal, despite being advertised as end-to-end encrypted. After a back-and-forth with the tech news site, Anker admitted it misled users and promised to fix the issue.
This article was originally published on October 1.