Yes, yes you should.
Hell, I unplug the damned thing when I'm not using it.
this post was submitted on 10 May 2025
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Privacy
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Yes. Technically everything is hackable.
Have there ever been cases where this actually happened?
Yes, several schools have been caught activating cameras in the home, and have punished students for activities seen on those illegally enabled cameras
Nothing happened to the schools
Spying trough the webcam?
Hell yeah. There's even sellers on hacker forums that sell access to the computers of hot girls. It's sick but it happens.
Most big time hackers don't do this though. They'll have so many computers under their control they don't waste time on singular targets.
Can you provide any sources?
Not really. Just scour some hacker forums and you'll find them though. Most RATs (trojans) have the ability to view trough the webcam.
This was over 10 years ago, but it popped into my head as soon as I saw this thread. Over 1,600 rent-to-own stores were found by the FTC to have spyware installed on laptops that enabled the stores to access the webcams. The spyware also included keyloggers.
I would bet money that this type of shit still happens.
More importantly, run an operating system you can trust.
I have Linux Mint installed on my laptop, I just don't trust M$ Windows with their AI crap.
another cultist
No operating system is trustable unless you coded it entirely yourself on an air gapped machine with your own hand crafted compiler, and even then you are still exposed to hardware backdoors
You're confusing "trust" with "can guarantee to beyond a shred of a doubt that the system is not compromised in any way".
that's prettt much impossible without going to insane lengths
linux is literally right there and it works for 90% of use cases.
lineageos can get annoying, yes, but thats mostly on the manufacturers.
if you think your average linux distro is trustworthy, you're mad.
there's a tons of binary blobs, not to mention all the known and unknown hardware backdooers that you can't remove by running linux.
most of the software your average user installs is untrustworthy as well.
the security model of linux is outdated at best, no proper isolation of programs. the linux kernel is leaky as heck and filled with tons of bloat.
You can get a Intel ME disabled laptop or a 15 year old one one that never had it, then put on some FSF approved OS that bans closed source software and compiles everything from scratch, isolates every program like with jails or Qubes or one of the newfangled container based OSes and tunnels all your internet traffic through some sorf of anonymization layer like Tor or I2P and ideally it's all happening in memory only and never writes to disk. But then again we know there are hidden microcontrollers with full memory access hidden behind obscure instructions in CPUs.
You can't tell me those aren't insane lengths.
Practically speaking there is no such thing as a "trustworthy" computer and suggeting linux magically makes it trustworthy is laughable. Completely ridiculous.
You need hardware disconnects on all sensors and physical obstruction of devices like cameras in order to have some level of certainty that they aren't being misused.
For some, particularly businesses reliant on software that can't perform on anything but Windows (and occasionally MacOS), sure. For individuals it is much easier. Installed Linux Mint a few months ago and I set up a VM for the stuff I truly needed some form of Windows for (tried dual booting for a bit but found that inconvenient). None of these are insane lengths, unless the cutoff for that is, "anything above minimal effort."
if you think your average linux distro is trustworthy, you're mad.
there's a tons of binary blobs, not to mention all the known and unknown hardware backdooers that you can't remove by running linux.
most of the software your average user installs is untrustworthy as well.
the security model of linux is outdated at best, no proper isolation of programs. the linux kernel is leaky as heck and filled with tons of bloat.
You can get a Intel ME disabled laptop or a 15 year old one one that never had it, then put on some FSF approved OS that bans closed source software and compiles everything from scratch, isolates every program like with jails or Qubes or one of the newfangled container based OSes and tunnels all your internet traffic through some sorf of anonymization layer like Tor or I2P and ideally it's all happening in memory only and never writes to disk. But then again we know there are hidden microcontrollers with full memory access hidden behind obscure instructions in CPUs.
You can't tell me those aren't insane lengths.
Practically speaking there is no such thing as a "trustworthy" computer and suggeting linux magically makes it trustworthy is laughable. Completely ridiculous.
You need hardware disconnects on all sensors and physical obstruction of devices like cameras in order to have some level of certainty that they aren't being misused.
In the past, I had dual booted windows and linux (Ubuntu, I believe), and eventually, windows managed to screw with the bootloader and brick the install. Never tried dual booting again. Windows VM on Linux is a much better solution.
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Is it really insane though?
Even a decade ago, it took longer to download a Linux distro than it did to make a bootable disc, boot to it, and install.
Seriously, the very first time I installed Linux on anything was maybe twenty minutes of actual effort total, with the rest being waiting for things to download or process during install. I can't call that crazy lengths. Not everyone is as confident in following instructions and willing to take a risk, but it isn't some kind of hyper specialized skill, and the very fact of a bootable storage means you can verify a given install would work on your hardware.
Now, changing roms on android? I would agree that doing so is absurdly more difficult than it should be, and there's more pitfalls that can screw things up. But I didn't get the impression you meant that.
if you think your average linux distro is trustworthy, you're mad.
there's a tons of binary blobs, not to mention all the known and unknown hardware backdooers that you can't remove by running linux.
most of the software your average user installs is untrustworthy as well.
the security model of linux is outdated at best, no proper isolation of programs. the linux kernel is leaky as heck and filled with tons of bloat.
You can get a Intel ME disabled laptop or a 15 year old one one that never had it, then put on some FSF approved OS that bans closed source software and compiles everything from scratch, isolates every program like with jails or Qubes or one of the newfangled container based OSes and tunnels all your internet traffic through some sorf of anonymization layer like Tor or I2P and ideally it's all happening in memory only and never writes to disk. But then again we know there are hidden microcontrollers with full memory access hidden behind obscure instructions in CPUs.
You can't tell me those aren't insane lengths.
Practically speaking there is no such thing as a "trustworthy" computer and suggeting linux magically makes it trustworthy is laughable. Completely ridiculous.
You need hardware disconnects on all sensors and physical obstruction of devices like cameras in order to have some level of certainty that they aren't being misused.
linux is not secure
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Absolutely, unless you're lucky enough to have a laptop with a Physical killswitch on your Webcam + Mic module, then it's not needed since flipping the Switch physically kills power to the Camera module's USB header.
Framework Laptops have this Feature.
My Asus has one and I didn't know about it and FOR YEARS I thought my webcam was broken- it wasn't even showing up in the device manager. I bought an external webcam, because I figured it was pooched and I had to use a webcam sometimes, but not often enough to care into looking to get it repaired.
This is a story about me being dumb.
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TL;DR
Yes
Also disable all microphones etc. of course
Fun fact, every speaker is a microphone and vice versa.
While true, an average speaker isn't sensitive enough to get quality or understandable sound out of, and that's assuming software can be rewritten to accept input from them.
This isn't a realistic privacy concern imo, but it is a novel fun fact, and if you have a 3.5mm jack you can play around with it on a PC
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Can you cover the lens with sandpaper and rub it for a few minutes? Permanent problems require permanent solutions
This is the energy I’m looking for. Impractical but powerful.
Most people would like to use the webcam occasionally though.
Chapstick + Webcam + Twist Chapstick on Lens + "The camera looks like that even when I clean it" = Problem Solved
Yea that's just great when I'm needing to do a virtual job interview. Really professional.
Chapstick is removable...
Zuckerberg has been doing this for over a decade.
https://mashable.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-webcam-cover
The answer is yes, obviously duh, yes.
My Thinkpad has a built-in camera cover. I keep it closed unless I'm specifically using it.
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Cover all cameras on all devices.
Related, when we were shopping for a smart TV last year, it was so difficult to find one without a microphone... I already don't like my phone having a microphone, why would I put it into my bloody TV...
I already don’t like my phone having a microphone
A phone without a microphone. A phone... without a microphone... is not a phone.
Can I ask what you use a phone for?
by that sentence I obviously meant that the hardware has the ability to listen to me at all times, but I guess it needs to be spelled out
Classic missing the thread deliberately for internet clout
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EFF gives out tiny stickers at conventions for that purpose. I've been staring at an EFF sticker for years.
I learned the other day my laptop doesn’t even have a camera. I’ve never noticed in the six months of owning it.
Excellent.
I have a 15+ year old lamp on my desk which has a bulb that gets quite hot. Didn't realize my laptop was directly under it one day. Melted the laptop lid slightly directly where the camera is located.
Everything else works fine except for the camera. I always disabled it in BIOS but now it's physically disabled. Sometimes the adhd solves problems on it's own.
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