A stranger texted you a link and asked you to tap it. That is, correctly, the shape of about nine tenths of the scams people are warned about, and I have no interest in telling you to ignore that instinct. So here is the literal inventory of what this particular kind of link does, item by item, and what it does not.
The pillar for this cluster gives the tour. This one is the specification.
What tapping it does
It opens a web page. That is all a link can do, and it is worth starting there, because a lot of the unease around this comes from a fuzzy sense that tapping something hands over control of the phone. It does not. A link opens a page in the browser you already have, the same as tapping a news headline.
The page then does four things, in this order.
It asks the server whether the code in the link belongs to a real inspection that is still running. If it does not — wrong code, finished job, expired link — you get a short message saying so and nothing else happens.
It shows you a recording notice. You have to acknowledge that before any video is delivered. This is not a cosmetic banner that appears over the top of something already playing; the video genuinely is not sent until the notice is acknowledged.
It shows the company name and the property address at the top, so you can confirm in one glance that this is your inspection.
Then it plays video, muted, with a button to turn the sound on.
What it does not do
It does not install anything. No app, no download, no prompt from an app store.
It does not create an account. You are not asked for an email address, a phone number, a password, or a verification code. There is nothing to remember and nothing to cancel later.
It does not turn on your camera or your microphone. Not "asks first and then does not" — your browser never puts up the permission prompt at all, because the page has no ability to send anything anywhere. The inspector cannot see you, hear you, or tell what room you are in.
It does not track your location. Nothing on the page asks for it.
It does not let anyone talk to you through it. There is no chat, no message box, no notification. If your inspector wants to speak to you, they call your phone like a person.
It does not give you access to anything else. One link, one inspection. It is not a login to a portal with other people's properties behind it.
What it gives the inspector
Two things, and they are both counts rather than identities.
They see how many people are currently watching — a number, not names. That is genuinely useful to them, because knowing somebody is on the line changes how carefully they narrate. Five people can watch the same inspection at once on the ordinary plans, so on a busy job that number moves around.
If the question button is switched on and you use it, they see how many frames you have flagged. Again, a count. They review the frames afterwards.
That is the whole of what travels from your side to theirs.
How long it lasts
This is the part most people get wrong, and it works in your favour.
The link dies when the inspector ends the inspection. Not "becomes less useful" — the page stops serving video and says the inspection has finished. If the inspector forgets to end it, the link expires on its own twelve hours after it was created. Whichever of those happens first is the end of it.
So it is not a bookmark. You cannot come back to it tomorrow to re-watch something, and neither can anyone else who happened to see the text on your screen. If somebody forwards the link to a friend an hour after the job, they get an expired page.
The recording is a separate object entirely, and it does not travel on this link. Who holds it and for how long is a real question with a real answer, and who owns an inspection video works through it.
What to do if something looks wrong
Three checks, in order:
- Does the address at the top match your property? If it does not, close the page and call the company. That is a link sent to the wrong number, which happens, and they will want to know immediately.
- Does the company name match who you hired? Same answer.
- Did anything ask for a camera, a microphone, a login, or a payment? Nothing on a viewer link should. If something did, you are not on the page I am describing. Close it and call.
None of those are paranoid. They are the same three checks I would make.
Why it is built this narrow
Every capability a page has is a capability somebody has to trust. A viewer page that could see you would need your permission, which means a prompt, which means a decision made in a hurry in a driveway. A link that lasted forever would be a permanent window into a property that somebody could forward without thinking. A page that needed an account would mean a password and an email address for a thing you use once.
Cutting all of that out is not generosity. It is the smallest set of capabilities that still lets you watch, and small is the point. There is more on the reasoning behind the expiry in why inspection links should expire, and the security page has the technical version.
If you want the same sequence described from the inspector's end — what they are tapping while you are watching — that is on the how it works page.
InspectStream records what an inspector observed. It is not a public adjusting service and does not prepare, negotiate, or advise on insurance claims.