Here’s a riddle: what do Mark Zuckerberg and FBI Director James Comey have in common? I mean, besides the fact that they both run organizations that know waaaaaaaay too much about us?
Answer: they both put tape over their webcams.
You might have seen Naked Security’s writeup of James Comey’s speech at Kenyon College in April, where he argued that “absolute privacy” has never existed in America – until now, when encryption by default creates spaces where law enforcement can not go, even with a court order.
…and where he noted, in a following Q&A with students, that he puts a “piece of tape” over the webcam on his personal laptop.
Well, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has just revealed – one assumes inadvertently – that he does the same thing.
In fact, he goes one step further: he apparently tapes his microphone, too.
On Tuesday, Zuckerberg posted a photo of himself holding up a cardboard Instagram post prop in celebration of the Facebook-owned service now being used by more than 500 million people every month.
As the eagle-eyed have pointed out, in the background was a laptop that had a square piece of tape over the built-in camera, as well as a black square over what might be an audio jack, or maybe dual microphones, on an Apple laptop.
3 things about this photo of Zuck:
Camera covered with tape
Mic jack covered with tape
Email client is Thunderbird pic.twitter.com/vdQlF7RjQt— Chris Olson (@topherolson) June 21, 2016
As Facebook CEO, Zuckerberg must have seen his share of account hijackings and malware.
In fact, it surely hit home for him when his Twitter and Pinterest accounts got hijacked a few weeks ago.
So is the Facebook CEO paranoid? Absolutely. And he’s got cause.
Crooks can use a piece of malicious software called a remote access trojan (RAT) to take over your computer, record your conversations, and yes, to turn on your webcam to spy on you.
Victims have included those preyed on by sextortionists. Miss Teen USA was one of the most famous victims of these slimy creeps: Cassidy Wolf was blackmailed by a crook who used a RAT known as “Blackshades” to take nude pictures of her through her webcam.
How to protect yourself from webcam spies
- Cover your webcam when you’re not using it with something non-transparent like tape, or point it towards the wall. If your webcam is embedded in your laptop, close the lid when not using your laptop or cover the camera with a webcam cover. No need to get all drab about it: all the cool kids are using these official Sophos webcam covers.
- Patch your OS (Windows, OS X) and applications (web browser, email and messaging client, etc.) as soon as security updates are available.
- Malware often arrives in emails, so be wary of links and attachments in emails or social media messages from strangers. Even messages that appear to come from people you know could be faked.
- Keep your computer safe from RATs and other types of malware by installing security software and keeping it up to date.
Sander
Pretty interesting that we have always want to cover the webcams of our laptops, but i haven’t seen that webcams/camera’s are covered on phones or tablets, while those devices are also a lot, maybe even more, around us and has likely a camera pointed at us, naked or not a phone is often around us.
Vog Bedrog
Trickier with phones and tablets, since they often use the camera to regulate screen brightness. Of course, you could either put up with constant max brightness (and the accompanying decreased battery life) or be regularly tweaking the brightness manually, but the convenience and effectiveness of a mobile device that adjusts its own readability is tough to argue with from an end-user standpoint.
Petr Chval
Correct me if I am wrong, but I havent heard of malware spying through webcam on Android/iOS devices, only PCs…
Allen Baranov
YMMV but usually a laptop camera has a good view of the world around it and a phone camera is in a pocket or pointed at the roof.
I just realised that my phone case (with flip front cover) covers up the front facing camera. Bonus.
Bryan
“all the cool kids are using these official Sophos webcam covers”
and I therefore am relegated to using duct tape
Mike
That’s something they are paid to say. Real cool kids are building their own using sugru and lego.
Bryan
Wish I’d met you before the duct tape… I had to use the hose to clean off all that residue.
:-(
brianc6234
I put part of a Post-It note over my laptop camera. But I also disabled it in the device manager since I never use it.