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FBI director: Cover up your webcam

thehill.com

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Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#121

Post by lostlogin »

noobermin wrote: post #40
6t6t6t6 wrote: post #6

From all they ways I can be spied, the webcam is the one that concerns me the least. At the end, all they will see is a bearded man staring to the front. May they be able to see me naked? Well, probably, but I honestly don't think that they will make a lot of money by selling my naked pictures... My wife tells me that I still look good, but I suspect that she is being nice to me. What would scare more is that they ma…

When you're a person with access to the nation's secrets, it may matter.

Having a camera see your face? This seems unlikely. Invasive, disgusting and gross, yes.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#122

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

Larrikin wrote: post #47
6t6t6t6 wrote: post #6

From all they ways I can be spied, the webcam is the one that concerns me the least. At the end, all they will see is a bearded man staring to the front. May they be able to see me naked? Well, probably, but I honestly don't think that they will make a lot of money by selling my naked pictures... My wife tells me that I still look good, but I suspect that she is being nice to me. What would scare more is that they ma…

I know that what the webcam captures is probably the least important thing a hacker can get but I do it because it is visible. Protecting your privacy should NOT be weird and a sticker over your webcam is a very visible way of showing that to the public. When people ask why I do it, its a good opportunity to educate them on the capabilities of the US government, other nation-state actors, and hackers in general. If t…

I sympathize with your goals of raising awareness, but I think it is in general a bad idea to teach security measures which are only for show. If education is your goal, don't you risk teaching people the wrong threat model?

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#123

Post by narag »

hacksonx wrote: post #108
School-Cotton wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...do I have to spell it out for you?

Please spell it out for me. Seems being 0001 1001 years old hasn't opened up my mind to such basic concepts. Also, what about the front camera on my phone?

Watching porn?

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#124

Post by fmueller »

josephcooney wrote: post #114
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're displaying a common trope I see sometimes with security: > "because this particular thing does affect me personally, it doesn't matter. And because it doesn't matter to me it doesn't matter at all" Blackmailing people with pictures taken from webcams is not theoretical. It happens[0] and it's good advice to tape up your cam. It may not affect you personally, but it may affect your wife, daughter, or sister in…

All the author did was say it wasn't a concern for them. Nowhere did they say it didn't matter.

He's clearly a man.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#125

Post by deftnerd »

6t6t6t6 wrote: post #6

From all they ways I can be spied, the webcam is the one that concerns me the least. At the end, all they will see is a bearded man staring to the front. May they be able to see me naked? Well, probably, but I honestly don't think that they will make a lot of money by selling my naked pictures... My wife tells me that I still look good, but I suspect that she is being nice to me. What would scare more is that they ma…

It's gotten to the point where I only feel totally comfortable using machines I've hardened myself.

My hardened laptop is an older Thinkpad laptop with LibreBoot to replace the BIOS, microphone and speakers and camera disconnected internally, removed the wireless cards, encrypted the partitions, and use Whonix as the OS. I've password protected the BIOS and it's set to boot only from the hard drive and I've also epoxied the screw heads in place as well as put globs of epoxy over all the ports other than USB in order to protect against hardware devices that can access memory through DMA vulnerabilities.

It was mostly an exercise in "how secure can I get". I'm not sure what else is possible.

If someone manufactured and sold a more modern hardened laptop, I would be interested in buying it.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#126

Post by aluhut »

josephcooney wrote: post #114
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're displaying a common trope I see sometimes with security: > "because this particular thing does affect me personally, it doesn't matter. And because it doesn't matter to me it doesn't matter at all" Blackmailing people with pictures taken from webcams is not theoretical. It happens[0] and it's good advice to tape up your cam. It may not affect you personally, but it may affect your wife, daughter, or sister in…

All the author did was say it wasn't a concern for them. Nowhere did they say it didn't matter.

> Hey, but putting a sticker on your webcam is a way to show how 1337 your are!

This was a little bit more.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#127

Post by JohnStrange »

sotojuan wrote: post #32

The webcam cover up is interesting to me because it's the only "weird privacy thing" I've seen regular, non-technical people do. A good amount of people at my university, most of which use social media liberally and don't care about encryption, cover their camera up.

It's not weird at all. Women should definitely always do that, because they use their laptop everywhere, e.g. in bed, and there are plenty of viruses and trojans that activate the webcam for sextortion and stalking purposes.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#128

Post by pseudonymcoward »

sotojuan wrote: post #32

The webcam cover up is interesting to me because it's the only "weird privacy thing" I've seen regular, non-technical people do. A good amount of people at my university, most of which use social media liberally and don't care about encryption, cover their camera up.

This is only idle speculation but:

A web cam resembles an eye staring at you all the time. This makes people feel weird, like something is staring at them. The threat to privacy is right in their face and on a gut level.

That's the reason so many people cover them even when they won't take other basic online privacy precautions.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#129

Post by aluhut »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #122
Larrikin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that what the webcam captures is probably the least important thing a hacker can get but I do it because it is visible. Protecting your privacy should NOT be weird and a sticker over your webcam is a very visible way of showing that to the public. When people ask why I do it, its a good opportunity to educate them on the capabilities of the US government, other nation-state actors, and hackers in general. If t…

I sympathize with your goals of raising awareness, but I think it is in general a bad idea to teach security measures which are only for show. If education is your goal, don't you risk teaching people the wrong threat model?

It's not. I do the same thing. And it works better then I expected. People do this in my office too now and thy come back with questions regarding security that go further then this. This happens also because they are being asked why they do this. It makes them think. They ask themselves why they put tape on their cam but "hide" their crappy passwords under the keyboard and so on.

It is creating general awareness.

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