Sqwiggle: Someone is watching you

wouldn't a simple motion-detected: yes flag or motionLastDetected:XX:XX:XX be less invasive?

I used Sqwiggle for a few months but a software update sometime late last year made it something I refused to use.

The changes meant that:

1. You can prevent somebody initiating a video call by setting your status to "busy".

2. The busy flag is removed when you are the only person in the chat room.

3. The camera indicator is disabled when nobody else is in the chat room.

4. You don't accept incoming video chats, they happen automatically.

Given that I mostly used Sqwiggle in a browser tab it was very easy for me to lose track of that fact it was running. It's one of many tabs and there is no indicator my camera is active if I'm alone. I typically have headphones in too but don't always wear them, so there is often no audio cue that a chat just initiated.

This is actually something that happened. I had an active call for 3.5 minutes that I was completely unaware of with video and audio streaming to the remote caller without my knowledge, after I had set the busy flag.

I work at home, and the ability for somebody to have a live audio/video stream into my house without my permission is unsettling. Especially as the only protection mechanism I have for that is to remember to terminate the application or close that browser tab every time I walk away from the computer or want to prevent video/audio sessions.

It's been a couple of months now since I last used Sqwiggle, so perhaps the clearing of the busy flag has reverted back to earlier behaviour, but ultimately I think unless I can change my profile to prevent automatic connection of video calls I'd never be comfortable with it.

Hey there, Eric here from Sqwiggle. Thanks for the detailed comment! Seems like you may have encountered a bug with busy mode. If you have it enabled, no one should be able to initiate a conversation with you. They can, however, "ping" you, which will allow you to choose to accept the connection. But it's possible I mis-understood what the exact issue was, if so, feel free to clarify :)

We definitely resonate with the general privacy concerns and are working on a mode which will allow you to turn the camera off, which we'll have completed very soon.

If you end up giving it another try, please let me know if you run into any issues or have any further feedback. Thanks!

My team and I tried to use Sqwiggle but kept running into problems with the video or audio track not loading. But these bugs can be ironed out.

I have one major gripe with the concept of capturing a photo on an interval. What if it catches me picking my nose? That could be embarrassing. Not picking my nose is not a solution. I am a primate with fingers and I like to pick my nose.

Hi Eric,

I meant to drop you guys a message a while back, but just never found a moment to do it.

There was a redesign a few months ago, notably this was when the camera became inactive if you were alone in the chat room. The issue with the busy state is, prior to this software release/version the busy flag was never removed unless you removed it or initiated a chat (after you accept the ping).

After the redesign, the busy flag was removed when any of the following conditions occurred:

1. You manually removed the busy flag.

2. A video chat is initiated (you are pinged and accept the call)

3. You became the only person in a chat room.

As I mentioned, it's been about 2 months since I last used Sqwiggle, so I'm not sure if the above is still true.