WEBCAM SECURITY

So my Mom’s sister and mother are in town. They’re also known as my aunt and grandma respectively. This is the first time they’ve been in Vancouver since both my sister and I bought our apartments. Both of them stated an interest in seeing our homes.

Now I’m not sure if this was a smart decision but I gave an extra set of keys to my apartment to my parents. This means they theoretically can come into my home any time they want though they’ve promised me they’d never enter my apartment unless they got my permission. Anyways, they asked me if they could show auntie and grandma my apartment on Monday morning before heading off to the casino. I said yes but with some a strict guideline. No one should attempt to clean anything in my apartment.

To ensure this guideline was followed, I made sure my webcam was enabled. I turned on both streaming and motion detection. If motion was detected, it would e-mail me. Sure enough around 11:30am I got an e-mail from my webcam. So I turned on the stream and proceeded to watch as my parents, my aunt, and my grandma took a tour of my apartment. It all looked on the up and up. My grandma did take a long, hard look inside my fridge. I also watched my aunt take some photos so she could let my cousins (her kids) see what my place looked like. Then things went a bit awry. I watched in real-time as my Mom went to my utility closet, grabbed my Swiffer, attached a wet cloth, and proceed to Swiffer my kitchen and bathroom floor. The same floors I cleaned thoroughly the day before.

Stunned at this breach of protocol, I immediately called my Mom’s cell phone. The chatter was probably too loud for her to hear the ring through her purse. The phone went unanswered as I could only hopelessly watch my Mom clean my already clean floors. Only when she had put away my Swiffer could she hear her cell ring.

I watched onscreen as she answered.

“Mom, why did you get the Swiffer out? Come on, you promised.”

What followed was a bit of stunned silence as Mom tried to comprehend what was happening. She asked me if I was somehow watching her. I said yes, my webcam had shown me everything. She then relayed this fact to everyone else in my apartment. I then told her where the webcam was (in plain sight right on the coffee table).

I think she was kinda embarrassed because immediately walked behind the camera so I couldn’t see her anymore. She told me they left some cake in the fridge for me and they’d be leaving now. We said our goodbyes and they left in a pretty big hurry after that.

I saved a lot of still photos from the whole visit. I won’t post them here out of respect for my family. I will say that when I showed them to my sister, she was very amused.