Comment by kilo_bravo_3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kilo_bravo_3 | Hacker News Reader

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I've never understood physical covers, then again I am never in a compromising position in front of my laptop.

Any malware that can take pictures can record keystrokes. I want no cover so I can see the activity light because knowing the webcam is on is more important than it being on.

The (pennsylvania?) school district webcam spying scandal got kicked off because a boy noticed his webcam light coming on. If it had been covered would he have noticed?

No, the school district wouldn't have had pictures of him, but they still would have screengrabs, audio, and keystrokes and he likely never would have noticed.

Take all of the pictures of my double chin that you want.

I want to know that my webcam is coming on without my authorization so I can root out the spyware that is keylogging.

Passwords > Pics

If you're the type whose life will be ruined by pictures taken by your webcam, by all means cover it up. I'm too old and hairy to be blackmailed with nudie pics.

Having my passwords leak would seriously cramp my style, though.

And no, nobody is going to waste a zero-day that can reprogram a webcam controller to disable the light (if possible and often it is not) on a nudie-pics malware. They are going to use it to make actual money.

I don't understand why people have window curtains and close them at night. If you have them closed then you can't see the person spying on you outside. Door locks are more important.

This is what you sound like. The things can be used in conjunction with one another. It is not an or scenario, you can have both. You can also have covers which don't cover the indicator. You use different deterrent mechanisms for different threats. It is as simple as that.

Except to use your metaphor, software control of a webcam is like closing the blinds and putting a physical cover over the lens is like covering a window in aluminum foil in addition to closing the blinds.

In the Netherlands we don’t really close curtains at night. I also have no camera cover.

Don’t you have bright lights outside? Do you like being woken at the crack of dawn?

I live in Los Angeles. If there's bright lights outside, it means the guy down the street is being an asshole again (he keeps rearranging his outdoor sensor light to point out at different parts of the street) or someone kicked a neighbor's garden lights (why do people even have these?)

Only close them in the bedroom but nowhere else really

For me it's not about blackmail, it's about making sure the camera isn't accidentality enabled unexpectedly during a meeting.

The worst that would happen is I'd look kinda unprofessional slurping up some noodles, but having the camera covered allows me to be confident I'm not presenting unless I intend to.

Does that happen often?

We've been 100% Microsoft Teams since March so I'd say that in several hundred calls and conferences since then I've never activated the webcam without intent.

It's not frequent, but the desired number of times is 0 :)

There's been a few times that my camera has activated in a meeting, and shown a black screen because of the cover.

My Lenovo Ubuntu machine has cover built into the casing, which seems ideal. For my Macbook, I use a thin (<.1mm) plastic sliding cover.

Software is hard to use and randomly changes every time a stupid designer decides to shuffle the UI for no reason. So yes it happens.

It doesn’t matter how often this happens, it matters that it can happen. It is much nicer to have a cover and not worry, then to always remember “did I remember to deactivate the camera?”

I don't think it's an either/or scenario. It's easy to put a cover on where you can still see the indicator light on MacBooks.

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