Why is my laptop camera light on
Is Your Webcam SPYING On You?
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it doesn't take much these days to make
you feel like you're living in orwell's
1984. our smart speakers are listening
to us facebook isn't being very careful
with our data and what about those
little cameras on all of our computers
and phones
are they spying on us without us even
knowing it well it might not be
something that you think of regularly
but there definitely have been instances
of webcam hacking where people were
spied on in compromising situations and
as you may have guessed it's often not
easy to tell if this is happening to you
so to find out more we reached out to
troy hunt famous for creating the
website have i been pwned and we'd like
to thank him for his contributions to
this video
so there are a few tricks that you can
use to see if your webcam has been
activated without your consent a pretty
obvious tell is if that light that's
attached to the webcam turns on
unexpectedly
though you probably don't need us to
tell you that the wrinkle in that whole
plan is that the absence of a light
doesn't necessarily mean that no one is
watching you see while some webcams have
a light that is hardwired into the
circuitry and that will always turn on
if there's a signal being sent through
the camera itself
many others have a light that is in fact
software driven meaning that a skilled
hacker could turn the light on and off
at will and making matters worse it's
very difficult to figure out which kind
of light your webcam has however not
every trick that hackers use to spy on
you is super elegant so do pay attention
if the light does come on unexpectedly
when you open your web browser or launch
an unrelated program the culprit might
be a compromised browser extension or
application that you may be able to
simply remove easily
other less well-designed pieces of
malware can leave traces on your pc for
example some of them will leave copies
of recorded video somewhere on your hard
drive often in the default folder that
recordings are saved to so be sure to
check for videos that you don't remember
recording if you think someone might be
watching you
there is some good news though it's
actually becoming harder and harder to
accidentally get infected by malware
that will spy on you through your webcam
back when applets like java and flash
were far more common in browsers it was
easier to fall victim to malware of this
type including spyware that could
potentially take over your webcam and it
could happen simply by visiting an
infected website these days because of
these security concerns java and flash
are far less common plus
operating systems are automatically
patched quite frequently and the more
walled garden nature of mobile operating
systems makes it even more difficult to
pick up malware passively on devices
like those instead social engineering
reliant attacks that rely on tricking
the user into revealing information on
their own like phishing or remote access
trojans are more common ways to have
your webcam compromised remote access
trojans which allow a bad actor to
control a user's computer over the
internet are quite common in tech
support scams which you can actually
learn more about right here
additionally hackers that focus on
getting into webcams tend to do it in a
more target specific manner which makes
sense if you think about it cyber
criminals who are out to steal financial
information often try to cast a very
wide net and get the account information
of as many victims as possible because
like money is money no matter who it
comes from right but webcams buying is
often motivated by a perpetrator's
desire to surveil a particular target
maybe a business rival or a former lover
or a celebrity who they think they might
be able to blackmail that means that you
could fall victim to a targeted phishing
attack or even have surveillance
software installed on your machine when
you aren't looking
now that isn't to say that there haven't
been instances of hackers attempting to
spy on people at random just to satisfy
some voyeuristic tenancy or even sell
the footage on online black markets but
the bottom line is just be careful about
what kind of enemies you make or if you
think that people are after you all it
takes is a small piece of cardboard over
your webcam and no one will be able to
look through it i guess that really is
the bottom line of this one isn't it
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