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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

So the days of putting electrical tape over webcams are over? The black hats of the world rejoice.

In all seriousness. I am very careful about webcams. I would never own a screen with such a hidden cam. And the emergence of this tech is a little unsettling as it defeats an effective and very practical security measure.

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Same here, this would push me to use competing devices that don't have hidden cameras.

Another recent Chinese phone (may have also been Xiaomi?) had a "pop out" camera that you can put away, kind of like the pop out flash on digital cameras. That's much more preferable from my perspective. No tape needed!

Yeah the K20, not too expensive either.

ha, just imagine staying at a hotel where there's a giant flat screen with a hidden cam pointed at your bed...

a hotel can already hide a camera in many secret locations. this doesn't change that.

What if the hotel wasn't the malicious party? Maybe it's a "conference Webcam" built into a smart TV (aren't most nowadays?).

Yes, exactly- that was my point; it is fairly unlikely the hotel cares too much. But how secure are these devices? What is stopping someone from hacking into a bunch of them, recording hotel guests and then mining the data for compromising footage to sell / use to blackmail / <insert malicious purpose here>.

I never understood the reason behind covering a camera on a laptop. I mean, what exactly are you afraid of? Someone can film you sitting in from of a screen? A microphone would be a more dangerous threat in this case, no?

People do Other Things™ in front of their laptops...

Imagine that you never did anything in a certain room of your house except sit quietly. Are you saying that you’re okay with anyone standing outside that room staring into it at anytime?

Privacy. Simple as that.

I would like to kill my microphone as well. The fact that I have no easy way of doing that is not an argument for not covering the web cam.

I'm self conscious about my double chin. I don't want the cute guy working at the NSA to see that.

I have a security badge for work. I dont want it photographed.

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