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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.
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.
Someone should put a tape over Mark Zuckerberg.
I put tape over all my vents so no one can hear me on the built-in microphone either. That works, right?
>> I figure that seeing me naked would be punishment enough
On second thought, I'm pretty much in this guy's camp...except why are you naked in front of your computer? Are you really in that much of a hurry?
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:
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
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?)
Not too likely. Most people can't get their own camera to work properly on Linux. ;) If some malware does, Skype should hire him!
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.
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
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
I use foam tape - that way it also buffers the lid, something that many laptop manufacturers have skimped on.
For most machines, I also make sure I disable the audio drivers in the kernel, and rebuild without them. My main laptop can still be used with an external microphone through the high-def audio driver, but not through the built-in microphone that uses an intel-snd driver that isn't in my kernel. That's probably fairly good protection against being listened on, even if not perfect.
I run FreeBSD on my laptop. I don't have camera drivers on this thing!
Posting to undo a bad mod
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.
You must be new at this.
I drink ice tea instead of coffee.
Monster!
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I normally use a post-it note, makes it easier to take off for when you actually need to use it.
We're still talking about webcams, right?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I skip the middleman and just put tape over my mouth and nipples.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Or in my case, Maker's Mark at 10:30am.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I should take my security concerns from a man who uses "dadada" as his password? Yeah, no thanks.
Disgraceful. You should have a good slug in your coffee when you arrive and not touch another drop till lunchtime.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Fun with Windows: I disabled the microphone and uninstalled the driver on my laptop. No microphone was there in the devices UI. Silverlight has some debug mode where it will show you volume coming from your mic, it it was clearly still enabled.
And that wasn't even Windows 10.
Even on Linux, I wouldn't be surprised if the "auxiliary processor" on INtel CUs that has access to the IP stack also has microphone access, with some "power on voice" feature as a disguise for it's true purpose. There were definitely clever microphone hacks in the Snowden papers, though I'm not sure whether they were BIOS-only, or could be prevented by killing the driver.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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).
The UI on Skype for Business sucks
So its not just me...
Every meeting someone calls in from their phone, and their computer mic gets turned on. Everyone on the call gets treated to the lovely sound of feedback while we wait for the host to figure out how to mute the mic remotely. Then we spend 10 minutes waiting for the host to figure out how to present...
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Ha had a lousy web conference call a few weeks back, new remote building and things weren't working so well. It was mostly audio only but at one point we wanted a picture of what was being projected so one person used his laptop as the video. Then when done he forgets to turn it off, pulls the laptop back to himself, then partially closes the lid. The camera is now pointed straight at his groin. His hands are in his lap twiddling his thumbs, tapping his fingers, clearly bored and impatient. Luckily he never adjusted himself...