Should you be scared of your laptop’s webcam?

I feel like I hear about this one way or another, virtually every week.

 

I recall reading that Zuckerberg recommends taping them. So hey

 

Nope! HMP.A has my back, but even without it not much can be seen through black insulation tape.

 

3 Reasons Why You Should Be Scared About Your Laptop Webcam
August 22, 2019
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanba...scared-about-your-laptop-webcam/#1a4727e44369

 

Electrician's tape covers mine.

 

Yeah, tape. The microphone is harder, though.

 

You can just disable it in Device Manager and it will stop working. However, if at some point, Windows Update installer and updated sound driver, it will most likely become enabled again.

 

This is the problem with alerts about malware. Very seldom the news points out how much you have to do by your self until you get infected. Even more rare is the mention of that you like 98% of the time have to be logged in as an administrator to help the bad guy to infect you. And/or you have to allow prompts from UAC.
With that said, I always tape over the webcam (never use it anyway) just for peace of mind. Even though I never log in as an administrator and mostly run Linux I prefer the religious approach, just in case

 

As usual, apart from the black tape, running internet-facing apps from virtual machines gives you higher levels of control and isolation.

 

@deBoetie - Right. You can easily disable audio in VMs. And you need to specifically enable access to a webcam.

 

Same here. Sometimes I forget to remove it before making video call

 

Open up your laptop and remove the microphone. Put electric tape on camera. <--- This is all best.

We often give cell phones a free pass with their forward facing camera while we demonize laptops. Quite strange.