We’ve all heard the stories about someone being captured in the privacy of their own home on their webcam. You can file it under, “it’ll never happen to me” and most people do. Mark Zuckerberg however, is taking no chances and picture proof shows he covers his webcam along with his laptop microphone. One never knows if your system may have been compromised with simple malware that could give hackers access to your webcam. The reasons a hacker may want access to this are many, the point is, it can and does actually happen.
Documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden allege US and UK spy agencies intercepted webcam images from millions of Yahoo users around the world between 2008 and 2010.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) condones using a webcam sticker to make certain you’re protected. Though if a hacker has control of your webcam, there is a good chance they have other personal private information about you as well. But even so, it is a bit creepy to know that someone might be watching you and your loved ones.
Mark Zuckerberg also has his microphone covered which is kind of overkill as the tape he is using isn’t going to block out sound waves. It may muffle the audio a bit but if a hacker is smart enough to gain control of your webcam and microphone, I’m sure they have audio software that can clean up any dirty audio.
If you’re concerned about someone hacking your webcam, you can buy webcam stickers on Amazon for cheap that are a bit cleaner and nicer than tape or post it notes. Of course just about anything you can stick over the area that will still allow your laptop to close will work.
Do you cover your webcams? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
[button link=”http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36596070″ icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: BBC[/button]Last Updated on January 23, 2017.
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