Funny, 100% of people I know who use a camera cover due to “privacy” concerns also use Google Chrome as their primary browser. Stupid is as stupid does...
ha ha... go into the Chrome threads here and read the many posts warning people to stay away from that browser. There's always one person who posts "I bet you use Safari or Firefox because of "privacy" concerns, but you forget to cover your camera.
Hmm...
Anyway, I have every single camera on my devices covered. Even the ones that are laying unused in drawers. I have never used Chrome on my personal machines, and I refuse to use it when I'm on customers' machines. One asked me to help her with some pretty substantial system issues, and when I saw she had Chrome installed, I told her she'd need to install Firefox before I'd work on the problem. She did, and the problem went away. I didn't charge her.
I like to collect browsers just to try different user experiences but I stay away from anything Chromium-based, and/or anything with Blink, V8, etc.
So, now you know one person who covers the camera and doesn't use anything from Google.
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If you use a webcam cover, why? Can someone explain what they think someone is going to be looking at? I work at a large corporate company. If someone is hacking into our webcams we have much bigger issues.
Everyone seems to have one. People refuse to use their bloody cameras. I’ve joined a brand new team and I still haven’t met anyone on camera. Surely that defeats the bloody purpose of using video chats and cross company collaboration...
I would never participate in a video conference, whether it was for the job, or just family and friends. It sounds like a lot of your coworkers feel somewhat similar. As long as the work gets done, all is well. Maybe you should accept that and get past it?
Regarding what "someone is going to be looking at", well, you're thinking too small. Just as people think "I don't care who knows what I watch on Netflix, its nothing bad and I have nothing to hide" and don't realize exactly what info is getting traded out of their lives, there's a lot more to a glance at a single frame here and there from someone's web cam than just what's going on in the background. Please refer to my post earlier in this thread:
#217
It was just twenty years ago that zombie botnets became a thing. Background processes on peoples' computers were hijacked, bots were installed in root, and distributed attacks from compromised machines became commonplace while the machine owners were none the wiser. Banks were hacked, utilities were disrupted, pranks were played. Money was also wasted, as well as taken.
Now, I'm pretty sure of two things :
1). Most if not all of the affected people had absolutely no intention of participating in criminal activity, and
2). Criminal activity did occur, to the tune of billions of dollars over time.
Those same criminal types who had no trouble gaining access to private citizens' computers to plant bots, and able to generate billions of dollars in damage as well as profit in theft - what could those kind of people do with access to a camera? Plenty of still frames of peoples' faces taken over days, weeks, months, in various lighting situations. The mics? Sample those voices under a wide range of circumstances, stresses, and seasons. Put it together with criminal intent and what do you get?
The word "deepfake" comes to mind.
Do you think ransomware is bad? Thats just a bank account being held, or a business site blocked. See how it goes when your very life is held for ransom. Most people who don't care about those cameras and mics also glibly post all the details of their daily lives on social media feeds. What would prevent someone from doing a perfect deepfake of you - voice as well as face - committing a crime, along with an incredible amount of evidence that dovetails into your media posts. A malicious party could wield such a fake to take you for everything you own with no fear of retribution. Or they could simply frame you for their crimes by adjusting the evidence to fit your life and placing you deep in the middle of those criminal activities.
This doesn't even hold a candle to the potential harm that could arise from our government adopting a social credit score like China has in place, and the deep fake being used as one tool to administer it. If you think it won't happen here, sorry to tell you it already has started in the private sector. VISA has begun blacklisting people who hold outspoken conservative views as of June of this year. How long until the government does it?
So when people say to me "what do you have to hide?" I say, "My life".