Hello fenerman and mat
Thanks for holding my hand on this one.
Can I just run through my sketchy understanding of the position
I have read through the vpn for noobs but still fail to understand sufficiently why I am insecure/secure adopting certain paths.
My situation is that I do not understand how my cams are vunerable from the internet. If I connect to cams from my own network at home I am told I am secure.
Why am I secure?
I read that the dahua cams possibly have a calling home exploit
As soon as I connect using an outside of my own lan connection I am not.
Why am I not secure?
The other thing I wish to know is I have purchased an Asus wrt router; is there any advantage in connecting this to my resident netgear router ( no native vpn ) and setting up vpn on the new asus.
I understood the advantage of this would be easy switching from the vpn secure network to the normal network ( some websites I connect to will not let me use a vpn)
You are not secure when remotely viewing cameras without a VPN SERVER running in your house AND using a VPN client on your phone to make a secure connection. The reason is that you will have to port forward the camera, that means anyone with an internet connection can access it....these hackers run bots and scan ip addresses....they pray on vulnerabilities in the camera firmware.
Once again you are confusing two types of vpn.
step 1 - CANCEL your PIA vpn service...it does absolutely nothing for you. Waste of money and slows you down.
step 2- disconnect your netgear router and use the asus as your router...setup openvpn, download the app and make a secure connection using your phone...none of the websites you visit will be affected by your vpn server as it will only be used when you connect remotely. The websites not like ip address masking vpn services like pia.
remember to disable upnp in BOTH the router and cameras..disable any p2p/platform access as well.