141–150 of 218 posts
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The problem is the brand specification. Nobody wants unbranded laptops.
I (anecdotally) disagree. I'd love to have a good-spec laptop that had no logos or branding on it.
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I recently did it with the front facing camera of my phone. The back facing camera always points into the table. I feel uncomfortable undressing myself with that 'eye' staring at me (crazy times we live in ;p). I mean, this is one of those security measures that cost you basically nothing (a sticker) and can save you a huge ache in the unlikely case that someone is actually recording - why not do it?
That seems a little silly to me. A laptop camera is normally facing into the room, but the camera on your phone will normally be facing upwards, so surely you have nothing to worry about unless you are standing naked over your phone. Actually, that's given me a great idea to secure my phone from hackers. Stand over it naked and waggle my sack about - that's one camera they'll never ever hack again lol
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The problem is the brand specification. Nobody wants unbranded laptops.
I (anecdotally) disagree. I'd love to have a good-spec laptop that had no logos or branding on it.
Rdl specified Dell or Lenovo also for the reason that the supply chain for those two ecosystems are well-developed enough that providing customer support won't be a huge hassle.
I care about audio so much more than video, and text/keys/etc captured from the machine even more. As long as my screen and keyboard are out of the frame of the camera, I don't really care about it getting RATed. At worst, you'll see me naked, or making angry/etc. faces at someone on irc or email. While embarrassing it would be less bad than most of what you could accomplish by stealing actual information. OTOH, carr…
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Shorting the two wires of the mic together with a low-value resistor will do what you want, or you can have a physical disconnect switch. It's very easy to modify a mic in this manner if desired. You can even have the switch built into the sliding webcam cover. On digital mics it's a bit more complex to mute without disabling, but the brute force solution is to disconnect their power line in the same manner. Then aga…
That last point is interesting. Even with an RF detector, an accelerometer may act as a cheap room bug. Heck, if automobiles use them to detect when an airbag should be deployed, why not just use them as bugs in cars? Now I'm scaring myself.
AFAIK the airbag accelerometers are designed to detect much larger accelerations than e.g. the ones in a smartphone, and are thus essentially completely insensitive to anything lesser than a huge impact -- spurious airbag inflation is one of the things the manufacturers really, really don't want to happen.
Many of them are just mechanical switches actuated by a weight, with no active electronics (makes sense for such a safety device to be as simple as possible): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWSlwhYyOhI
And even when not impacting anything, a car is not exactly a quiet and vibration-free environment either...
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Like phones, most laptop webcams have no "on" light. You have to trust that the software you have on your device isn't using the microphone and camera without your permission.
you and i have very different experience with webcams. i have yet to see a webcam without an indicator led in my life.
http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-961237-0403-QuickCam-Messenge...
10+ years ago they basically defined what a webcam is (search "webcam icon" and observe the symbology --- appropriately eyeball-shaped), and they don't have any indicators.
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All smartphones now come with programmable low-power audio recognition DSPs for always-on "Hey Siri" and "Ok Google". So it's here.
A co worker is heading to Las Vegas next week and we chatted about it yesterday. My Facebook ads are now advertising Las Vegas night clubs.
I care about audio so much more than video, and text/keys/etc captured from the machine even more. As long as my screen and keyboard are out of the frame of the camera, I don't really care about it getting RATed. At worst, you'll see me naked, or making angry/etc. faces at someone on irc or email. While embarrassing it would be less bad than most of what you could accomplish by stealing actual information. OTOH, carr…
> Mostly because there's no real alternative to carrying smartphone yet. And yet somehow, I manage
But if you do indeed manage to not carry a mobile phone at all, yep, you are safe.