Teen Vogue counsels taping over your webcam to resist FBI (and other) surveillance

I have an early 90s Toyota; no data storage or transmission for anyone to snoop.

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I just put a post it over my MacBook Pro camera, and the screen went dark. Apparently the camera is used for the auto brightness function. I could disable and just go manual but I actually like auto brightness, so next will be to try some frosted tape with removable glue.

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There’s likely a sensor adjacent to the camera that you also covered.

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Quite relevant to this topic i feel :slight_smile:

True, but I don’t believe that’s their main point. If you’re going to be concerned about subversion of your camera, you should be at least as concerned about your data being compromising. But because it’s less viscerally creepy, the former gets far more attention than the latter, which is a predictable failure of human risk analysis which has evolved to devaluate privacy threats which don’t directly impinge on our most preoccupying sense, vision, or our second most preoccupying sense, auditory.

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Alas, Digital Native Vogue doesn’t really roll off the tongue. :wink:

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Not to mention that “digital native” is dog-whistle speak for “not too old to hire.”

I taped over my laptop’s cam a few years ago. I haven’t heard a voice thru my speaker say: “will you please remove the tape from your laptop’s cam hole?”

Yet.

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It’s Monday & the teacher didn’t say anything.

(Kiddo does absolutely nothing personal on the school laptop, at least, not at home. Yet it is still somehow her/our fault when there is a technical problem. I miss books, but that’s a “get off my lawn because I’m old” rant for another day.)

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Roger that. High time to install a Smart Toilet.

edit I kept tape on the laptop camera since forever. :wink:

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I don’t know. For the average high school security goon, reading through a student’s C+ essays is probably way less diverting than looking at them in their underwear. (We assume that today’s students use their smartphones, rather than the school laptop, for all the juicy stuff.)

I actually advise against literal taping (or other half measures like a post it) because the adhesive can leave residue. EFF’s laptop camera covers use a camera lens safe adhesive

Edit: Typed that in a rush. Post its are better than normal tape, but they weren’t intended for camera lenses. They will leave a slight residue.

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It’s like that scene from Alias where Will is dicking around with a tracking device not believing it’s real and then gets a sudden phone call telling him to stop messing around with it.

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I agree that teens are doing some of the most effective political activism, but unless this “Teen Vogue” post is 10 years old, it’s so late to the party that it doesn’t deserve a mention, let alone "Kudos to the teens for finally noticing something people have been talking about ever since laptops gt cameras!!

Last print issue, December 2017.

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FTFY, lol

Do we start measuring appliances by how many rolls of tin foil are needed to keep it wrapped up?
Instead of EPA ratings we get TFPA ratings?

I printed up an “If found, please notify” request with my contact information with a sizing box around it the width of my laptop’s bezel, cut out the resulting strip, and taped the whole thing over the webcam and the microphone hole next to it.
It serves several purposes - apart from the whole if-found-contact thing, it doesn’t leave residue on the lens and is detachable for those few times I actually do want to use the camera; also, because it’s not so obviously a piece of tape over the lens, I don’t have to have the usual conversations with the "what have you got to hide? brigade.

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What about the toilet cam?

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This is why all of us shall use a acamera blocker app. I installed Cameraless camera blocker in my Android phone, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.manyera.simplecameradisable
Its doing the job