I know this has been posted elsewhere in the forum but support asked I put this here directly. I recently purchased 2x IP5M-1173EB and updated to the latest firmware - V2.460.AC01.0.R (which for the record is nearly 2 years old). I set the P2P connection to disabled (well, it's unchecked) yet I am still seeing 30-40 attempts per minute to connect to AWS cloud addresses.
34.238.41.119 udp/8800 (unsure of FQDN right now)
35.169.221.250 tcp/443 config.amcrestcloud.com
35.169.214.193 tcp/443 config.amcrestcloud.com
54.84.228.44 tcp/80 (unsure of FQDN right now)
The generic response I got from support was:
The reason the pinging is continuing is due to the block on P2P. The connection to the cloud is active for 2 hours to allow customers who choose to use the service the ability to connect, However when it is blocked it does not allow it to communicate to the cloud to cease the connection as intended causing it to keep sending requests. This is all expected behavior currently. We can pass this along to our Cloud R&D team for future considerations.
The best I understand that statement is their logic is that my camera (with the "Disable" option) still needs to talk to the cloud to tell it not to use the cloud? The 2 hour window which is even noted in their support article (https://support.amcrest.com/hc/en-us/ar ... est-Cloud-) appears to be irrelevant, even though it's noted as a "security feature". A security feature is one that gives you control... my option buttons appear to have no effect at all, and it in theory according to design it reverts on every power cycle for 2 hours. Thats not a security feature, it's a usability feature. The fact that my devices are trying to talk this consistently to the Amcrest cloud without my permission leads me to believe that Amcrest is intending to collect info without user consent (device info, network data, etc) with or without the cloud setup configured.
Possibly most upsetting is that this has been reported AT LEAST 2 years ago (Jan 21, 2018 is first reference I can find) and the newest firmware for my cameras was released after that, but still almost 2 years ago. I use other branded cameras that use incredible similar firmware (seriously, it's remarkable how similar they look) and I know those cameras are from China. They put out firmware much more frequently and the cameras are behaving.... they only do DNS and NTP, as I've configured them to.