Is this a valid concern?

is this a valid concern?

You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide, goy.

If you have nothing to hide that doesn't mean they have nothing to find.

Use duct-tape for it

>google drive
surely it helps

>maclets can't even physically disconnect their webcams

It's minimal investment for worthwhile insurance. Why not?

/thread

Yes. The only concerned is getting laughted at by botnetted normies. Fortunately my laptop doesn't have one at all so this doesn't come up.

I just removed the cable.

yeah don't lock your door at night

what about the mic bud

>stuff with cotton
>tape over
>try recording voice with it
>if not enough soundproofing add more cotton and/or foam
???
PROFIT

I would say trips of truth, but
>not just disconnecting it

I jammed a paperclip into the my mic hole to break it. Now if I want to use a mic, I have to attach one via 3.5mm port or USB.

Unfortunately, you'll come to find that some laptops have a soldered on or glued-in connector.

If you have-
Took the words right out of my mouth user

Implying the CIA terminator niggers can't just reroute and find an alternate power source
should have removed it and thrown it into a pool of molten steel

Yes.
But the microphone is more dangerous than the camera tho.

Yes. But most people are blocking the camera on their laptops, easy enough, but not on their phones which would be too bothersome I guess.
However your phone goes with you everywhere including the bathroom while you don't do much in front of a laptop... Other than jerking off I guess.

Yes. NSA tools have been exposed which allow agents to remotely power on a cell phone and use the microphone and camera to spy on anyone nearby. I'm sure they have similar capabilities with laptops, even if they can't actually power it on remotely.

he broke the mic

unless they can reroute a new one i can't see how that's possible

>remotely power on a cell phone

Proof please, genuinely interested if true

this, bump for interest

All the NSA is going to hear from me is a lot of farting noises

if you are enough of a target to warrant using tools like that, the least of your worries is putting tape over your dumb fucking webcam

fuck you are stupid

>leaning towards your laptop to fart

You might as well remove the mic if you're at it. Otherwise, that piece of paper is prtty useless if they can hear what you say.

...

CAN'T CÚCK THE ZUCK

You don't mind me uninstalling the locks on your car and in your house do you? After all, you have nothing to hide.

If you're really paranoid, just take off the bottom case and disconnect the mic and camera. Literally a 2 minute job.

I looked for proof and found I wasn't quite correct. They can cause the cell phone to fake a shutdown so it actually just goes to sleep and then use the microphone, but if it is actually powered off (no way you could tell without removing the battery) they can't do anything with it.

Security should be a concern for anyone regardless of whether you are a target of the NSA, because if these exploits exist they can be used by anyone with the appropriate skills, knowledge, and/or tools.

It's already been touched on, but why does it matter if you own and use a smartphone? I don't think it's an inherently worthless gesture, but how much can be gained from someone seeing through your webcam, as opposed to peering through one of the two cameras that are always on your person in any given location?

Yes, xkeyscore is still being used by five eyes. Other similar programs are being used by most major spy agencies. If you are anyone worth anything or you think you might be on any watchlists it should be a concern, but if you're concerned about privacy there are a million other things you need to worry about and when you start taking all that into account start hardening your technology and scrubbing your online footprint you're going to draw even more attention to yourself.

One of the red flags for surveillance is when they see you avoiding surveillance, because they see that as a sign you might have something to hide.

They do hack into smartphones, which is why some people actually remove the cameras and internal microphones. Then all you have to do is plug a pair of headphones in that have a mic on it when you want to talk and thats already much more secure than a phone that uses the stockhardware.

Uh yes they can? Obviously we’re only comparing their desktop right? Otherwise name a single relevant laptop/aio that can

I put a switch in the back of my laptop to physically turn off the webcam.

Well I got linux and just have never installed any drivers for my webcam. so unless theres some deep hardware level backdoor im fine.

If you have intel hardware, a dell computer, or a HP computer you're already fucked, there are more hardware backdoors that I cant remember off the top of my head and there are probably ones we dont know about so its probably safer to assume your computer is unsafe if you're doing anything that requires privacy.

I have an Intel CPU, and while I've heard of backdoors related to that I don't see how anyone could access my webcam.

Yes, it is concerning you are using a Mac.

Please switch as soon as possible.

>NSA
Unless you use your laptop for some cheesy pizza, no you nobody.
>actual hackers or something
Yes, you're not a target anymore. You're the next score. Break it and then install gentoo. Don't worry if you don't know how to use gentoo, the average hackers don't either.

>mac

Everything you do is already being piped to the NSA.

>apple
>the one company actually telling the FBI and NSA to fuck off and INCREASE the security on their devices

if they (any attacker, private or govt) can access your camera at will, it's probably easier and more productive to just keylog you than to bother going through obtaining, transferring, and getting info from video footage or pictures
same thing with audio on your computer, you're much more likely to type up your plans of attack than to talk about them

what are they going to hear?
Sup Forums NEETs don't have anyone to talk to IRL, and you're probably not muttering your plans to the world
at least with the camera they're going to be staring at you jacking off while wearing programming socks and getting pictures of your ahegao while you're looking up shimakaze shota trap hentai

the phone is an actual worry
it can see where you are and what you're doing at most times
it has an active network connection the vast majority of the time while you're out and about
it can track where you're going, whether it be loose-grained from the cell signal to fine-grained via GPS
ultimately, you flat out cannot ensure you aren't being watched when in the presence of a smartphone, unless it's turned off and in a faraday cage
and, more likely than not, you're going to be talking around it, unlike your laptop or whatever

this is the point where you give up and just assume what you're doing isn't worth watching

this sounds like a good idea
there's probably something wrong with it, but it seems sensible if you're actually paranoid

The CPU microcode update mechanism & Intel Management Engine two supposed backdoors, I'm not exactly certain what is possible with the Intel Management Engine because you can't view the proprietary information but with the microcode update machanism, if you solved the asymmetric cryptography you could push microcode updates to the cpu

What mactoddlers believe:
>>INCREASE the security on their devices

Reality:
>installs backdoor directly to the NSA

Apple and microsoft and a bunch of other companies were part of PRISM anyway so they were just handing over the data and in return they got kickbacks, the NSA, CIA & FBI didnt even need backdoor the hardware.

Not really. The camera and status led are usually wired in such a way that the camera can't be on without the light

I've always wondered about this. This was Rossman's argument, and he knows a lot more about hardware than I do.

There was this Russian website that was shared on imageboards a few years ago. It used a flash vulnerability to get access to your webcam. When you accessed the website it made a picture through your webcam and uploaded it to the gallery on the site. Thankfully I was on my PC which doesn't have a webcam but that's when I started to put a paper over the cam.

Wrong.

you would think the indicator light would be a hardware function so that when power is supplied to the sensor, it would also be supplied to an indicator light. This would make the light pretty much impossible to hack. However, in my own experience I've not seen a single webcam, internal or external that works like this.

In most cases, it's a firmware function. Webcams have their own microprocessors and run code directly within the webcam. Control the light is one of those firmware functions.

In other cases, it's a driver function, either within the kernel mode driver that interfaces at a low-level with the hardware, or a DLL that interfaces at a high-level with software.

There is documented evidence of governments using techniques like this to monitor video from a webcam while it also appears off.

Read this

What you believe is up to you, of course.
What you want to believe is also up to you.
But what you want me to believe is another matter.

All the ones I've seen they've been in series...

only if you believe vigilante Mr. Robot hackermens and Anonymous are a real threat to you. If you do some really illegal or have hardcore sex right in front of your laptop webcam, then yes put that gay ass piece of tape on it.

I don't have a webcam on any of my devices except galaxy s5 and at that point I"m fucked anyway but...
> not physically breaking webcam
> not physically breaking microphone

since phones are being discussed here: would using a dumbphone/flipphone increase privacy? I feel like it‘s almost the same

Now that's an uncluttered toolbar

My macbook is a facebook machine and I still have more than twice the icons

My 10 inch uncircumcised wang

>proprietary device with manufacturer specific hardware and software that broadcasts your location at all times as its primary function
>proprietary device with manufacturer specific hardware and software that broadcasts your location at all times as its primary function that doesn't have a touchscreen

Gee, I wonder.

If you need a smartphone, yes. I'd say I trust crapple more than google (android). But, you honestly don't need a smartphone, just get a hackerphone like a good Sup Forumsedditor.

>Taping over the camera but leaving the microphone attached.

Just realized I read your post wrong. I thought you were saying whether or not it'd be a good idea to get an iphone over an android.

You're still vulnerable to IMSI surveillance so you're not that secure but probably a little more secure.

The reality is that no mobile phone is secure.

Thinkpads. Takes literally 2 or 3 screws

well I have an SE :^)
>The reality is that no mobile phone is secure.
that‘s what I was thinking, but at least you would decrease the attack surface for people with malicious intend and reduce the amount of data collected from companies...the gov being able to track me isn‘t my biggest concern since I am irrelevant, but companies selling my information to shady ad companies doesn‘t sit right with me
>broadcasts your location at all times as its primary function
is this true or tin foil-hat-core?

I was just curious since I am thinking about getting a modern? nokia dumbphone anyway as a primary phone.
I use an iphone se atm which is much better than a poodroid device with jewgle spyware, but smartphones are extremely distracting and pointless for most people including me, that‘s why the dumbphone idea.

Depends on who you're asking

If you have nothing to hide, nothing to fear. Therefore you do not care about your privacy. Prove it. Dox yourself, upload backup of your emails, IM conversations if you really have nothing to hide. ;^)

Even normies do this apparently. Maybe because they don't use it anyway.

The only reason normies justify botnet social media is because they find it useful I think because most are willing to cover their cams.

Nice try CIA nigger

Don't forget the microphone

>what are microphones
Just remove it physically if you care

No, it's not. It's retarded for many reasons. First, nobody gives a shit about some ugly guy masturbating to anime shit. Second, most webcams come with an indicator LED that is physically connected to the webcam, i.e. if the webcam gets any juice, the LED is on. Third, if you really do have any sensitive information floating around in your basement (you don't), the microphone is probably the first thing to cover up.

No. 99.9% the only thing your webcam sees is your face in bright light lookinng at a screen. What's more interesting is seeing what's on your screen or recording audio, to capture what you're doing or doscussions in the background. I guess you could be scared of the camera recording you while you're masturbating, but unless you hold your laptop towards your crotch you won't see that you are anyways. Also Mac computers have an led that's hardware bound that if the hardware is accessed at any time, it'll light up, unless the led died.

>enough of a target to warrant using tools like that
Ah you mean like that time when they had records on the entire population of the western world?

So unsolder it?