Q: What is 24/7 monitoring?
A: 24/7 Professional Monitoring enables secure and complete security, wherever you are. If an alarm is triggered, certified experts from our monitoring centers will be immediately notified and take the appropriate action. This includes reaching out to you to ensure that you are safe and dispatching the appropriate first responders on your behalf.
Q: Is Professional Monitoring available in my area?
A: Canary and Professional Monitoring is currently available in the U.S. (all 50 states, excluding American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands).
Q: Are my videos private and secure?
A: Your security and privacy are extremely important to us and we take this matter seriously.
Video content will only be recorded when you are in Away mode, and when a person is detected. You will always have control to escalate or dismiss any alert notifications, or cancel any alarms in the event of a false alarm.
In the case that an alert is escalated to our monitoring centers, certified agents and first responders will only be able to view the emergency video clip. With video verification as evidence, police officers are able to give your alarm higher priority, resulting in a faster response time.
Q: How do I enable my Professional Monitoring service?
A: Professional Monitoring is only enabled when the location is in Away mode, your Person Detection notifications is set to “active”, and no other location members are present at the location.
Q: How do I contact the monitoring center to cancel an alarm?
A: If an alarm is triggered, you will receive a notification alert, which you can disarm within 60 seconds. This will signal to our monitoring center that you consider this a false alarm, and the alert will not be escalated to first responders.
If you do not disarm your initial notification alert, our monitoring center will review the alert and reach out to you by SMS and phone in the event of an emergency, and the alert can be dismissed at any point via communication with our agents.
Q: Do I need to use Canary cameras to sign up for Professional Monitoring?
A: Yes, you will need to have a Canary home security camera in order to sign up for Professional Monitoring. Visit www.canary.is to browse Canary home security cameras today.
Q: How do I sign up for Professional Monitoring?
A: You can always sign up for Professional Monitoring on your desktop web-app, through the Canary app, with Apple subscriptions, or by calling us. You must have a Canary device already set up to subscribe to a Professional Monitoring plan.
You can reach the customer support team at 1-855-731-8500. (8AM - 8PM EST Mon - Sat and 9AM - 5PM EST Sun).
Q: How do I change my Professional Monitoring plan?
A: To suspend or cancel service, please call our customer support team at 1-855-731-8500 who can assist you or proceed to Canary.is and log in. From there you can self-cancel.
If you purchased Professional Monitoring through Apple Subscriptions, you can cancel by completing the following:
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Settings App
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Profile Settings (top row on the page)
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Subscriptions
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Tap into your subscription
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Cancel
Q: What does Professional Monitoring protect against? What happens during an alarm?
A: Canary's Professional Monitoring is a 24/7 video monitoring solution that provides real-time emergency support and surveillance for your home.
If an alarm is triggered by a camera during an armed state, you and members of your location are alerted right away. If someone from your location does not respond in 60 seconds, a certified professional monitoring expert will assess the situation, and the appropriate first responders will be dispatched to the location.
You and members of your location have the ability to dismiss or escalate any alarm. Once an alarm is sent to the monitoring center, only you and your emergency contact will be able to dismiss the alarm. In the case that first responders are dispatched, you will be notified via text message/call.
Q: How is Canary's Professional Monitoring different from traditional alarm systems?
A: Traditional alarm systems and current DIY home security solutions help users identify potential risks via video surveillance and instant notifications. However, simply receiving an emergency alert has its limitations, and in some cases, it will be too late to react and apprehend a break-in. So what happens when there’s a home break-in while you’re away? There’s where Professional Monitoring comes in.
Professional Monitoring provides an additional layer of security and protection for your home when you need it most. Certified experts are on call 24/7 and will be able to dispatch first responders if there’s ever a home break-in. What really makes Canary’s Professional Monitoring unique is that our security system provides video verified dispatch, which decreases the number of false alarms and allows police officers to give higher priority to your alarm, resulting in a faster response time.
When an alarm is triggered by the camera during an armed state (indicating a burglary in the home or other types of threat), you and members of your location are alerted right away. If no response is issued from them, a certified expert will assess the situation, and attempt to reach you and an emergency contact via SMS and phone call. If no response is received, first responders will be sent to your location to resolve any potential threat.
Q: What are the benefits of having video verified dispatch?
A: The primary benefit of having a video verified dispatch is that first responders are able to give higher priority to your alarm, resulting in a faster response time. Video verified alarm systems, such as the one supported by Canary Professional Monitoring, reduces false alarms. Provided that 98% of alarms are false, and given the fact that law enforcement resources are limited, police often respond to traditional alarms once higher-priority calls are resolved. Video verified security solutions therefore not only help lower false alarms, but first responders and law enforcement will be dispatched much quicker as they're able to prioritize your alarm.
Q: Do I need a permit for Professional Monitoring?
A: Your city or locality may require you to obtain an alarm permit for activating and operating a monitored alarm system. These requirements are often in place to reduce the number of false alarms and unnecessary utilization of police, fire, and EMS resources. Failure to obtain a required alarm permit may result in municipal fines or refusal by an emergency agency to respond to an alarm at your premises. To find out if a permit is required in your area, contact your local police department, using their non-emergency telephone number, or look them up online.
The length of your permit will vary depending on where you live. Some jurisdictions only require an initial registration and the permit will not need to be renewed unless there is a change to your address or contact information. Other jurisdictions will require you to renew your permit on a yearly basis.
If you have questions about requirements or obtaining your alarm permit, you can contact us at pro-monitoring@canary.is and our team will assist you.
Q: What happens when my alarm goes off?
A: In the event that an alarm goes off, you will immediately receive a notification. You can then either escalate or dismiss the alarm. If you don't respond in 60 seconds, the alert will be escalated and a Professional Monitoring expert will review the video. At this point, our certified experts will try to reach you and your emergency contact via SMS and phone call. If there’s no response, or if an emergency is confirmed, first responders will be dispatched to your location right away.
Q: How do I make sure there isn’t any dispatch if I want to test the alarm with the Canary App?
A: Users will have the capability to manually escalate or dismiss any alerts via the mobile app. A simple way to test alarms is to activate Professional Monitoring while being in Away mode, intentionally trigger an alarm, and then dismiss it via the app.
Q: Why is it important to add a secondary emergency contact?
A: A secondary emergency contact is helpful in escalating or dismissing alerts in your home. When an alert is escalated to the monitoring center, a certified expert will reach out to you and your secondary emergency contact either by text or phone call to confirm the emergency. Having this contact gives the monitoring experts another person to reach in case you are not near your phone or are unable to respond.