FBI director: Cover up your webcam

Re:FBI director: Cover up your webcam by sotojuan on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @11:13PM (#12503105)

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.

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Re:FBI director: Cover up your webcam by smelendez on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @11:22PM (#12503149)

It actually seems less weird to me in a university setting. Most university students live in small quarters, so they're more likely to have a computer in front of them while they're nude, using drugs, having private conversations or doing other private things.

They're also around lots of new people of varying levels of maturity who could have a decent chance of getting physical or network access to their computer, much more than neighbors in the rest of the world.

A creepy stalker or blackmailer spying on a university student through a webcam sadly doesn't seem that farfetched, especially for women.

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Re:FBI director: Cover up your webcam by pseudonymcoward on Thursday September 15, 2016 @03:48AM (#12504176)

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.

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Re:FBI director: Cover up your webcam by Sylos on Thursday September 15, 2016 @04:26AM (#12504326)

Also just in general, people understand what a camera does. It's much harder to understand the implications of abstract "data" going off onto the internet.

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Re:FBI director: Cover up your webcam by wingerlang on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @11:27PM (#12503172)

I think university aged women would be the most logical person to cover up their camera.

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Re:FBI director: Cover up your webcam by JohnStrange on Thursday September 15, 2016 @03:48AM (#12504173)

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.

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