Knowledge base · Cameras
Can a pet camera record sound?
The ICO assumes home cameras might record sound, and it treats that sound as personal information.
Its home CCTV guide says cameras can capture images and voices of other people, and that this is their personal information. The duties it lists for filming outside your boundary mention audio as well as pictures: do not capture more than you need, let people know, be able to respond to a person who was seen or heard, and delete recordings regularly or automatically.
If a pet camera's microphone picks up neighbours because the camera faces a path or a garden, the ICO's boundary rule is the one to read. The page says this guidance is under review and may change. It does not publish a decibel limit for pet cameras, so this answer will not invent one.
Indoors, pointing at your own animal and not at other people's personal information, is the arrangement the ICO tells owners to prefer.
Sources
- Home CCTV systems — Information Commissioner's Office, accessed 14 November 2026.