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Mark Zuckerberg Tapes Over His Webcam. Should You? (theguardian.com)

Posted by msmash on from the growing-trend dept.

Remember when FBI's director James Comey was spotted using a piece of tape over the camera on his laptop? At the time, Comey noted that he started doing it after he saw a person "smarter" than him do it as well. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apparently also puts a tape over his webcam. Zuckerberg posted an image on Facebook yesterday, celebrating Instagram's big milestone of hitting 500 million monthly active users. In the background, we can see that his laptop has a tape over the webcam, as well as something around the microphone port. From a report on The Guardian: Even experts who don't cover their cameras think they should. Why doesn't Matthew Green, an encryption expert at Johns Hopkins University? "Because I'm an idiot," he said. "I have no excuse for not taking this seriously ... but at the end of the day, I figure that seeing me naked would be punishment enough." While Zuckerberg probably does have any number of advanced persistent threats trying to break his digital security, normal people shouldn't be too complacent either. Installing backdoors on compromised computers is a common way for some hackers to occupy their time.On an unrelated note, it appears, Zuckerberg uses Mozilla's Thunderbird as his primary email client.

4 of 292 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Light Sensor... by Thelasko · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, I'm that paranoid.

    To clarify, I'm not worried about a 3 letter agency using my webcam. I'm worried about a two letter department. IT. Here's why:

    • They installed Iron Port to look at my web traffic (I know you are reading this IT people). So I know they are interested in snooping.
    • The UI on Skype for Business sucks, and I might inadvertently broadcast myself picking my nose in a conference call.
    --
    One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
  2. Laptop and tablet makers need to add a switch by hwstar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A switch needs to be added to laptops and tablets to electrically turn off the microphone and camera by removing power to them. We can't trust software to do this, so it shouldn't be in a menu as a soft function.

    1. Re:Laptop and tablet makers need to add a switch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Could you trust the switch? With all the reports coming in about backdoors found hardware, I am not sure one could actually trust a switch these days, unfortunately.

  3. The only thing I have in common with him by damn_registrars · · Score: 3, Insightful
    No, not the webcam thing. I'm apparently more careful with my webcam and my software than he is.

    it appears, Zuckerberg uses Mozilla's Thunderbird as his primary email client.

    I've been using Thunderbird for a long time now. Before that I used Netscape Communicator (which looked a lot like the usual setup for Thunderbird). If he's smart enough to use Thunderbird then maybe he's not completely awful.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.