Let’s say someone hacks into your webcam. They can see everything in front of your laptop.
If you ask me, that isn’t too scary. I’m not very concerned about someone staring at my face all day. I’d actually take that as a compliment.
However, there’s more in a laptop than a webcam. Namely, there’s a microphone.
A microphone that hears every word you say near your laptop.
How scary would it be if someone can hear everything it hears?
If you will go as far as to put tape over the webcam, you should get the microphone taken out too.
Here’s what makes the practice of taping over your webcam futile.
The LED next to your webcam.
This LED is hard-wired to turn on whenever the camera is used. There’s no software, which means that a hacker can not influence the function of this LED. If the camera is used, there is pretty much no way to stop this LED from turning on and informing you that someone is being a peeping tom.
Sadly, most laptops don’t have a similar LED for the microphone.
The best thing you can do is have it disabled with some software or a modification to the hardware.
