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Mark Zuckerberg Tapes Over His Webcam. Should You? (theguardian.com)
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.
I put tape over the light sensor on my laptop. Just in case it's actually a camera.
Yes, I'm that paranoid.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I normally use a post-it note, makes it easier to take off for when you actually need to use it.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
When I was a kid, there was an episode of the A Team where they took a Polaroid picture from the perspective of a security camera and then put that picture in front of the camera lens so it couldn't see them. Just do the same thing but with a print out of goatse or something.
I physically disconnected the camera on my laptop.
Then I walk around with a phone with who knows how many cameras and mics.
But does he cut the wires to the microphone on his computer?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
If you're so worried about someone stealing audio/video off your laptop then why bother to type or click anything with it... I would assume that keylogging would be much simpler to implement.
If I had a net worth of 35.7 billion USD, then yeah. Until I make a bill, I'm just fine without any tape. I run Linux and keep my OS updated. Lot easier, more valuable targets out there.
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.
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.
I have been doing that for years, that's what the Chiquita Banana stickers are for.
This story is utter manipulative bullshit. Propaganda.
The story encourages people to irrationally displace their urge to take action by suggesting an easy act of resistance.
It basically tries to delude people into thinking they are in any way resisting mass surveillance by encouraging them to engage tangibly with the idea by covering up their camera when not in use, or at least imagine that surveillance can be resisted by such simple and pointless measures. It's a blatant psychological trick.
You should not feel better about your privacy because you tape over a camera. Even if video data of you is being collected continuously most of that information is completely worthless compared to everything else that with absolute certainly is being collected and processed.
Of course the important video data would come from when you are actually using your camera....try covering it then....
You should be absolutely OUTRAGED that this kind of toxic thinking and blatant psychological manipulation is being shoved in front of your face if you have a single basic unit of free will and intelligence.
But then you should also be organizing into independent unions and threatening to strike to cripple the economy until the appropriate referendums can be held to abolish mass surveillance and tyranny in general. But hey, that takes a lot of confidence in your perception of society. I guess you're excused from your duty to your family, your community, and your country because you let your self esteem get worn down to nothing by constantly deferring to "experts" on every matter.
I'm using Linux, so it probably doesn't work, anyway ;)
(serious: I suppose this actually IS possible on Linux, but any cases in the wild?)
I'm guessing that there may be one of two people who got their camera to work on Linux. But not much more than that. ;-)
I don't suppose you remember the fun of trying to get ISA sound cards working under Linux? Half the time it was a struggle with Windows.
a person who thinks there should be no such thing as privacy for the rest of us values his own , there should be a word for that!
I'm using Linux, so it probably doesn't work, anyway ;)
(serious: I suppose this actually IS possible on Linux, but any cases in the wild?)
Not too likely. Most people can't get their own camera to work properly on Linux. ;) If some malware does, Skype should hire him!
Thats why the Zuckerporn is so blurry!
No?
I'd rather take the laptop apart and unplug it. I still have an ancient laptop that I purposefully bought without a webcam.
My desktops generally don't even *have* webcams on them unless it's deliberately attached for a particular event. My laptop has one built in, but Asus was nice enough to give many models a little sliding plate/door which covers the camera. When you want to conference, just slide the plate off.
Just to be sure, and to avoid hidden web cams too, I put tape over my private parts
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
When people ask me why I put making tape over my camera lens, I reply "Because I'm smarter than you."
Yeah, I'm an asshole.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Instead of taping over my webcam, microphone and whatever - I came up with the brilliant idea to cover MYSELF in tape all over, before I use any computer. That way it does not matter if I use some other computer where I have forgotten to tape over the webcam.
I'm not hardcore about it though, it's not like I use the camo duct tape, just the normal stuff.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's both good and bad. There's a certain practicality to it.
But it means that you think "your" computer isn't yours; that you've assumed it's reasonably likely that your computer is running hostile software. That may be true, but if you think it's the case, then how/why use that computer at all? You're trusting that computer with lots of things, not just the sights within its range.
Once you start thinking in terms of "this computer should be less powerful, because it's my adversary" then I think you've strayed from sanity. You should be thinking about how to change the computer's allegiance, not reducing its capabilities. A camera that works for you is unambiguously a good thing, unless you don't even trust yourself.
I would never do this on a laptop or desktop, because I make sure those are mine. But my phone? Yeah, I know that's not fully mine. (But someday that'll change. It's an important goal.)
You should care because Fuckerberg knows a thing or two about invading people's privacy. If he himself is worried about his, you should be about yours.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
It's about how ridiculously easy it is for hackers to pwn your laptop and watch you over your webcam. The "community" that does that sort of thing has become pretty sophisticated in their tools.
Yeah the government could be watching me too. But while I oppose that on philosophical grounds, I don't personally do anything that might interest the government. Hackers OTOH are less discriminating, and it's easier to just eliminate the possibility of compromising pictures or even blackmail by covering the camera with some tape. The 1 cent it'll cost you is the cheapest insurance you can buy.
-Mark Zuckerberg
Ironically stated by the financial elitist who made his fortune convincing a billion humans to hand over their privacy...
exercising precautions like this. Case in point, the director of the FBI, Zuckerberg, ect. are high profile targets, whereas jim bob every person is not.
I get that its possible, but for a normal person is it really probable? Unfortunately opinions like this reinforce what I like to call the "Im more important than I actually am, so I need to worry about x" effect. Like when people go over-board on safes, alarms, weapons...and those items literally become the most expensive things they own.
Everyone likes to believe they are someone important...someone worth robbing/hacking/extorting from...but the truth is you're probably not worth a crooks time...at least not the extortion from images kind.
I guess what im trying to say is sometimes stuff like this really comes off like fear mongering as opposed to genuine good practical advice. You want good practical advice on linux/windows/mac? Always create and use a secure, locked down account to surf with and never use your admin account for anything but software installs, that should take care of 99% of normal people's concerns.
Seriously, do you actually think we can't get into your computers?
We can even drive your cars.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I run FreeBSD on my laptop. I don't have camera drivers on this thing!
Posting to undo a bad mod
Years ago, before the miniaturisation of all this shit, webcams used to have a hardware light that lit up when the camera was active. Even on laptops.
Rather than software that can't possibly detect if another driver's been used to power the hardware, without all the hotkey/taskbar junk (if they're on your machine already, they can do anything, including disabling your hotkeys or rendering them irrelevant).
Yet again, some tiny, simplest, cheapest-possible-piece of hardware is excluded in favour of software that does a worse job (oh, just YET another thing running in the taskbar and reading your keyboard constantly for hotkeys, along with the wireless driver, the bluetooth driver, the printer driver, etc. etc. etc.).
Go get 5 re-place-able and very opaque stickers for a $5 donation. I keep one on my webcam. To boot, it looks classier than a post-it; it lasts forever; and it advertises for the EFF -- a worthy cause.
Go here to get your own set of camera covers.
If your security is bad enough that other people can access your devices, then you probably have bigger problems than people seeing your junk.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
yeah, he *talks* with 3 letter agencies.
I'm very sure there's a reason he's doing this.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
A camera is also a thing that can easily pointed to elsewhere. It is very limited in what and when it can see things. So if you are doing something it should not see, you better just turn it in another direction. That way you are more aware that you ARE being watched and not think all is well.
What is worrying is the microphone. We all know that search engines can understand what we are saying. What about the rest? How do YOU turn off you microphone?
Do you trust the software or do you open your device and de-solder the internal microphone if there is one, like on most laptops. And what about the one on the most used device, your phone?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I came here to shill the same link.
How can you tell when Betteridge's law of headlines doesn't apply?
Force the issue. Write a headline "Betteridge's law of headlines doesn't apply".
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Post it. Been there since, well, since I had a webcam on my laptop. You want to spy on me all you will see is "a suffusion of yellow".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I normally use a post-it note
Same here - cut down to an appropriate size. Though I originally used electrical tape.
I've been taping them over since they started being standard equipment on enough laptops that finding a laptop without one when looking for one that could run linux crimped the selection.
(If they'd had a switch I might have trusted it - though that would be foolish. Since they don't the choice is easy.)
I
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
At some point the cameras will be pixel sized and be part of the screen.
But then I also don't use OSX or Windows, and I do not ever directly open email attachments, or download and run random shit I find on the web, so I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be worried
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Why hasn't someone come up with a virtual video camera device that could be fed whatever input you wanted (video files, stills, etc) and tell your camera-enabled software or OS that this was the "default" video camera or just outright disable the physical camera device.
I only turn it on when he makes a FB status update via the app. Legit.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
If he likes Thunderbird so much, maybe he should sponsor its development with a little bit of that wad of cash in his pocket now that Mozilla.org is looking to jettison Thunderbird to the curve. He probably would make back in interest on his cash horde the paltry amount that it would take to keep Thunderbird alive and developed..
Because it's like using gloves in a biology lab. If it contacts your skin your aseptic technique has already failed...
I should take my security concerns from a man who uses "dadada" as his password? Yeah, no thanks.
If Zuckerberg's laptop is pawned (despite access to the colossal might of Facebook's security dept) can we safely assume that Facebook itself is fully pawned?
I'd prefer to know: how long before laptop oem's include a built in twist opening webcam lens cover, like some of the Cisco IP Phone's use (thinking of the CP-8865)
I believe I once heard that people like Zuck, Gates, Jobs etc. don't let their kids have smartphones, tablets, social media accounts etc. or severely limit the usage of such (and television) to a very limited time each day. No citation, obviously, but it would be nice for someone with the inclination and time to try and find out how much of this statement is true.
Which would probably say much more than some jewish dude taping over his cam.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Would it be a good idea to stick a small piece of aluminum foil under the tape? Not a huge amount, just enough to cover the lens. It might not even have to stick out from under the tape.
I ask this because not all Webcams have good infrared filtering, and tape by itself often lets IR through. Aluminum foil should theoretically take care of that. But do modern built-in Webcams still have IR filtering bad enough to even make this necessary?
How can you tell when Betteridge's law of headlines doesn't apply?
When you actually understand what the original point of it was rather than lazily trying to appear smarter than you are by thinking "OMG it's a headline in the form of a yes/no question, therefore Betteridge applies."
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
i make the point of appearing naked in front of any cameras i have in my home which i know to be off. if someone is recording without my knowledge, at least they'll suffer.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The camera isn't particularly worrisome to me, but the microphones are. And it's really hard to reliably disable the built-in microphones on laptops, phones and tablets.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Good luck spotting a quick flash of the cam LED when malware is taking just a picture of you with that camera; esp. when you're not looking...
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
It probably costs more to special order a computer that doesn't include a common consumer grade peripheral. Not to mention there has to be different SKUs, and different plastics to deal with the hole, even if it is merely fitted with a plug.
your points #2 and #3 are spot on though. But I wasn't able to disable my microphone without pulling the laptop completely apart, which it resisted doing, the hinge gave me so much trouble that I gave up and put it back together.
Who uses a laptop microphone anyways? they sound horrible and pick up tons of background noise. Totally worthless to have on a laptop. I'd trade that webcam and microphone for a design with an extra USB port!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The old-school Silicon Graphics web - the Zeye 1.3 - had a little blue plastic shutter to cover the lens. Picture http://www.retrotechnology.com...
I work for a worldwide corporation. All company-issued laptops not only have the webcam taped over, the drivers are removed from the system.
I tape over the webcams at home too.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
I have a usb webcam that stays unplugged unless I need it.
But then, i have 2 tablets that have cameras & mics on it.
Fuck.
My 3DS has a mic & cameras on it.
Fuck.
I don't have enough tape.
Be seeing you...
Why should we really care what Zuck does? Do what's right for you!
That number is actually right around 50%.
From what I've seen the LED comes on at least half a second before the camera is usable, and there seems to be a shutdown delay as well, so I don't think it would be possible to take a pic with the LED only flashing on so quickly that you wouldn't spot it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Let's face it, if you know what you are doing you will have purchased an enterprise grade laptop and opted not to have the camera and microphone installed because said manufacturer (Dell of course) knows that you may need to work in high security environments.
Hmmm, I have been running Linux on my laptops for many years now. While in the older days there were sometimes problems getting the stuff to work (due to driver issues), it's been a long time since this was an issue.
Mark Zuckerberg, David Schwimmer and Sarah Jessica Parker walk into a bar.
The bartender says "Did you all get fired or something?", and they say "No".
So he asks "So, did a relative die?", and they say "No".
"Well, did your team lose?" "No!".
"Well what's with all the long faces then?"
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Never. They stopped putting physical shutters over the cameras to save a fraction of a penny, I can't see them adding something even more expensive than that back in.
Yes, this. I just inventoried the half dozen laptops that are near me right now, and not one of them has a camera LED.
What you say is true, but my counterargument is that multiple layers of security are always desirable. Let's say you've locked down your laptop but someone manages to hack in and install malware anyway. It would be very nice if the malware was as limited in effect as possible between installation and your discover of it.
The true and honest answer: because that increases the build cost by a fraction cent, and when you're making millions of something, those fractions add up. Manufacturers realized that removing the shutters did not effect sales, so away they went.
You should care because Fuckerberg knows a thing or two about invading people's privacy. If he himself is worried about his, you should be about yours.
I would imagine most Zuckerberg hackers wouldn't give a shit about him the person, unless he's got some really, really juicy secrets to blackmail. Listening in on some boardroom conversation to know what company Facebook will acquire next to cash in on the stock market, on the other hand...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Nobody's going to see anything through my laptop's camera that would bother me to get out. It'd be way dull.
If somebody can do it, though, they can probably look through my personal files, and there is stuff there I'd rather wasn't public knowledge. They can likely intercept my passwords, and I really don't want that happening.
So, I see no reason to tape over the camera.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Mark Zuckerberg Tapes Over His Webcam. Should You?
Yes. Next question? Are they all this easy?
No. Go to the nearest sex shop, buy a lifelike-looking dildo at least porn star long, ideally something truly horselike, repaint it to match your skin tones if necessary, and mount it so that, if they turn on your camera, they become suicidally depressed if male, and horrified if female. Now wait.
If they are turning your camera on, you will KNOW! You may be kidnapped by a soon-to-be-disappointed operative, but you will know.
Thank you -- that got me to do it. :D
I hacked the PS4 camera firmware to get it to work with my apparently-buggy USB 3.1 controller card. You still have to unload & reload the driver every time you want to use the camera (or even change resolution or frame rate), but it does work. Sometimes. (I suppose I could have hacked the USB controller's firmware instead, but it does not seem to be reloaded every time it powers up the way the camera's is.)
Mostly thanks to This Guy
Task Mangler
A year or two ago I saw a description of a "telescreen" variant on an LED or LCD flat display. Some of the pixels in each cluster were light sourcing, but some were light-sensing. They had individual lenses, like an insect eye, spaced very slightly differently from the pixels themselves so the field of view fanned out appropriately (say, for a virtual viewer's eye being located a couple feet behind the screen).
The result is a flatscreen that is also a camera. Handy for videoconfrencing, as looking at the image on the screen also means looking at the camera. Handy for construction: No separate camera needed, simplifying construction and reducing the amount of non-screen bezel around the screen.
Impossible to put a piece of tape over it, though. You'd have to intercept the wiring or install your own code.
Even intercepting the wiring might become impossible, as the signal both ways could be encrypted under the guise of video copy protection. Cut the inbound wires and the screen stops displaying, too, while the encryption makes it effectively impossible to separate the inbound video from the inbound side of the outbound video's DRM handshaking.
Tivoization makes software tweaking almost impossible. Things like Intel's AMT's management engines, or AMD's equivalent means even if you could replace the software you're still hosed.
Add a piezo (or other MEMS device) sensor to detect the flexing of the screen and it's a microphone, too. Orwell's telescreen is created.
(Heck: You could make it a drop-in replacement for a NORMAL screen and the spooks could install it on a laptop that DOES have a camera and microphone for you to cover up. Use the official ones for the user features while reserving the screen for the clandestine and the victim thinks he's shut it off while the spooks gleefully watch and listen.)
The 1984 scenarios may be a few decades late. But now we HAVE the technology!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Oh, my camera works. But Skype can't see it half the time...
I had a discussion once with a friend who has both a Masters and PhD in electrical engineering. He was working at a company and told me that they had technology for 'eavesdropping' that he would've thought was technically impossible before working there. I'm not surprised by someone using tape and no longer think it's paranoid to use it.
No need to do so, if you only run trusted software. If you need to fear that something uses your webcam without your permission, you have bigger problems than the webcam.
And the webcam is boring. What do you expect to see when secretly recording? Some grimaces of the user, who doesn't know he's filmed. Maybe you see him naked. Very thrilling, because there are no naked people on the internet!
The problem is the mic. While an image of you is utterly boring, your conversations are very interesting. And taping the mic is hard, if you want to make sure that no sound gets in anymore (as some programs may better reconstruct your words from a low sound than you would expect).
So the mic is something, where it may be a good idea to cut the cable and buy some usb mic for when you need it. It has better quality anyway.
You should tape over the camera on your laptop and on your phone. There is no reason why these peripherals should not be connected through a physical switch on your devices.
I do not know why such devices do not exist. You can imagine that people do not care enough for manufacturers to do this. But then you see and read about all the people who are doing this and wonder why manufacturer's do not target this section of the market. I for one, would consider a phone with this option to be more valuable than the typical one without this privacy option.
I suspect it is much easier to eavesdrop on devices that do not provide and audio/video on/off switch. So what market are these manufacturer's targeting?
You might think no one wants to see that but...
Probably they just want to take stats of when and how often.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.