Use a surgical mask instead of a banana. It feels less aggressive.

You are right to be wary of that behavior as it is spreading.

That being said I believe it’s good to be mindful of the “paranoid privacy nut” in the sense that… WHO are you concerned might have WHICH information about you?

I don’t know you but… if I were to find your name I could find your address or at least roughly where you live. In fact depending on what you post one could potentially know your neighborhood without even knowing your name. Now I didn’t know you had a pet, now I do. That being said even without a pet… if you live somewhere you are expected to walk around your neighborhood. It might be to go buy milk, help neighbors, drop mail, etc. There is relatively no new information there. Your neighbors might know you are around, their doorbell cameras might have footage of you doing so… and what? How is the confirmation that a perfectly average behavior is indeed coherent? What also NOT having that footage bring? Maybe you are traveling and thus not with your pet but maybe you also are sick.

So… I agree with you that all those cameras with footage are not healthy but also what do they genuinely add or remove? I would argue in principle a lot but in practice not so much. I would even argue to biggest impact is unwarranted stress and concerns, the chilling effect.

Walk freely however you want, it’s your neighborhood, ignore the cameras.

PS: as someone already pointed out, one does not need video cameras to track your movement and patterns, using wireless signal (5G/4G, WiFi, BT) on your phone is enough.

You would hate living in my apartment – there are at least seven doorbell cameras on my floor, and more cameras in the elevators and parking garage.

I understand your privacy concerns but I don’t do anything to conceal myself around doorbell cameras. I know I’m recorded by dozens of cameras and other devices every time I leave home. Trying to conceal my face would make me stand out more and might look suspicious to my neighbors. So it’s better to be boring and not give the neighbors anything interesting to look at. Those cameras are here to stay and soon almost every home will have them.

Most teslas have cameras, too so be careful walking near one.

I take some evasive measures if I know someone has a camera but generally it’s something I try not to think about. Our culture encourages privacy invasion and most people are happy to give up their own (or others’) if they’re told to. You’ve just gotta assume every step you take outside your house is being recorded

When you walk and attempt to protect your privacy, are you wearing or carrying any WiFi and/or Bluetooth devices? Ring devices are Amazon Sidewalk devices. They’ll record nearby devices like your phone, whether you want it to or not.

I’m not sure what you think your threat model is here. I’m not happy about it either, but my place of residence isn’t entirely private information already. I’m pretty certain it’s available through multiple public information sources. Cameras being able to see me in that vicinity might help someone determine my daily habits and schedule, but there are many other ways of that as well.

Again, I’m not happy about it, but I feel like you need to ask yourself what risk you’re trying to protect yourself against here.

As another commenter pointed out, any of the amazon based ones are part of amazon sidewalk and record nearby bluetooth and wifi devices. Sidewalk is also partnering with flock, so that data is available to law enforcement and possibly corporations that use flock for security to be able to use for advertisement.

But so is your phone’s location data.

So if you’re trying to protect against this sort of thing, you’d need to be taking much more extreme steps. Different dogs at different times with entirely different outfits and rocks in shoes to make different gaits. Face coverings. Multiple burner phones not tied to your identity, and only taken out of farady bags to use in association with different identities.

And then it still would all tie back to the same house/general vicinity.

There’s no perfect privacy options, so you need to identify your threat model. What are you trying to protect against, how important is it, what are the quantifiable risks of failure, and how inconvenienced are you willing to be to achieve this.

It sucks. I’m not happy about it. But you can’t stop your neighbors from using them. So you’ll need to accept it, or come up with alternatives. Feel like moving to someplace more rural?

It’s always going to be a balance.

I don’t turn my face towards houses while I’m walking if I notice a doorbell camera

I do that haha… In all seriousness, I’ve recently quit my job as mailman, in part because of this. Year after year I saw the number of doorbell cameras increase, and so grew my discomfort of my job requiring me to expose myself, to these privacy-hostile situations. The worst case scenarios were semi-detached houses: since the doors to the paired addresses are right beside another. Between the entries there’s often (decorative) separation, requiring some acrobatics to shortcut to the next address. If the second address would have a doorbell camera, while requiring me to sidestep between the obstructions, I could either: A) face the door and have my face right up to the camera, or B) turn my back to it and spin back into position. I did the latter, and I HATED having to adapt my seemingly simple job to this extend, just to protect my dignity.

The Netherlands technically requires a sign which indicates camera surveillance, besides having to direct cameras in such a way that they cannot capture the public sphere. But have a guess at how much enforcement there is in this regard…

I do avoid those streets where I know there are too many of those. Which is kinda great since it helps me walk for a longer time.

Just cover your face in public

E: Islam is the light