A Russian website notorious for streaming live footage from hijacked webcams, including in Australia, is back online after an outage.

The website, called insecam, takes advantage of devices, even baby monitors, with weak passwords or no security protection to stream the footage online.

The sit was down on Friday morning, but had returned by early afternoon.

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The site streams footage from more than 70,000 hacked webcams, and shows video taken inside bedrooms, businesses and living rooms.

A scene from a hacked webcam on the site.

The steams also came with the exact coordinates of each camera’s location, making them a major safety and privacy concern.

Britain’s privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), threatened on Thursday evening to take “regulatory action”.

Simon Graham, the UK’s information commissioner, said he would work with US Federal Trade Commission to take the site down.

The website currently has 284 feeds from Australia.

The hacked cameras are similar to CCTV but designed to allow owners to watch live footage online.

Yet many people unwittingly grant hackers access by failing to change the default password, which can be as simple as “1234”.

Experts have urged owners to change their passwords.

Information is being sought from Australian authorities, who are understood to be consulting with foreign counterparts.

– with AAP