Gadgetory

you've probably seen people cover their webcams but should you cover your webcam former FBI director James Comey thinks you should you still have a piece of tape over your cameras at home heck yeah Edward Snowden and even Mark Zuckerberg appear to cover theirs it could protect you from attacks like the one Miss Teen USA experienced in 2013 which events secretly spied on her and recorded her and then blackmailed her but you're not a head of state and you're also not a celebrity so do you really need to worry about someone spying on you through your laptop's camera well yeah in 2013 a hacker told the BBC that access to a woman's webcam cost about a dollar and that he had access to 500 computers that's crazy so to find out how common these attacks are and whether we should be worried I talked to Todd Beardsley the research director at cybersecurity and penetration testing company of rapid7 there are only bugs in web-based technologies that allow attackers to open your webcam and record video on it they're pretty far far and few in between he explained to me that these vulnerabilities often show up in flash and Java and at this point there might even be one in html5 what really sucks is that you won't know if a website is affected also hackers can turn off your webcams of light so you won't actually know whether you've been compromised that's not great anything that wants you to like click in a very specific space in your browser like that would be very suspect you see a lot more now with like location services it's like click here to allow application service we're like that's typically the control well there's not a lot you can do about it other than state ok so at least tape will stop someone from spying on you visually that's a relief but how effective is covering our webcams and should we do it having a cover isn't it's a super cheap super easy thing to do that also doesn't get you a lot but at least it makes you feel better right and it is a signal to other people that you think about security okay so Todd says it can't hurt but hovering your laptop camera and actually address the much bigger risk of your cell phone camera and microphone microphone hacking is probably just as creepy and incriminating as a video conversations you know that piece of tape stop we actually tested this Hey okay so can you try to talk to me with your phone away from your face okay so I can hear you pretty perfectly meaning if a hacker had hacked into your microphone even if you had tape over it he or she would still be able to hear what you're saying hate to break it to you all but the reality is that cameras and microphones are everywhere now we have smart home speakers cell phones laptops smart refrigerators and even voice enabled TV remotes listening to us at all times unless you're going to tape over or physically disabled every one of those cameras or microphones you're still going to be at risk but if nothing else we can at least prevent webcam attacks with tape there is some superstitious comfort you get because you can see the camera sticker all the time like you're looking at it you can think like I'm doing it right it's a little bit soft to put the tape on the camera but but it does ultimately like also means that you're looking at security control all the time so you might be thinking more about like how long should my password be should I tell these people to play house which I click on this link and I think that is probably so go ahead put tape over your camera it might not stop hackers from listening through your microphone but it'll at least make us feel a little bit better and prevent them from watching us sleep at night Hey