May 18, 2026
Ding-dong, it’s internet chaos
Anyone on the Internet Can Ring Your Doorbell
A $12 doorbell panic has commenters joking, doomposting, and eyeing their front porch
TLDR: A researcher says a cheap smart doorbell sold online could let strangers hijack calls and bother homeowners, raising fears far beyond one device. Commenters responded with a mix of paranoia, gallows humor, and jokes that even broken building intercoms might be safer than “smart” front doors.
The actual tech story is wild enough: a researcher bought a cheap smart doorbell from Temu and says it was so badly protected that strangers online could hijack alerts, fake a live doorbell call, and even get the home Wi-Fi password with physical access. In plain English, the thing meant to guard your front door may have been rolling out a welcome mat instead. The researcher says this affects a whole family of apps and devices tied to the same company, not just one bargain-bin gadget, and the vendor only responded after the post went public.
But the real fireworks are in the comments, where people swung between existential comedy, full anti-smart-home rage, and pure chaos energy. One commenter turned the whole thing into a sad-funny indie movie, wondering whether random strangers ringing the bell would cure loneliness or just make it worse. Another delivered the thread’s loudest applause line: they trust smart gadgets so little that their printer is apparently one weird noise away from a shootout. That cynical take — basically “none of these gadgets are safe, not even the expensive famous ones” — feels like the strongest mood in the room.
And then came the prank-brain brigade. One person imagined editing yourself into someone’s front-yard video and acting confused when the homeowner opens the door. Another shrugged that, hey, if the building’s real doorbell is already broken, maybe random internet strangers could do a better job. It’s a perfect comment-section cocktail: security nightmare, bleak jokes, and people somehow making porch surveillance sound like performance art.
Key Points
- •The article reports that a low-cost Smart Doorbell X3 bought on Temu could be hijacked, impersonated during live calls, and used to expose a home Wi-Fi password through a debug port.
- •The author says one attack can silently transfer doorbell calls to an attacker’s phone using only a free account on the platform.
- •The article describes the vulnerabilities as platform-level issues in a backend operated under the Naxclow brand, not a flaw limited to one specific reseller listing.
- •Related apps including V720 and ix cam are said to share frontend and protocol similarities with X Smart Home, suggesting shared backend code.
- •The author says the findings were disclosed on 2026-04-29, a CERT/CC VINCE case was opened on 2026-05-06, and Naxclow acknowledged the report on 2026-05-07.