Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Is it unnecessary to cover one's webcam on Linux? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

54 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Cross-posted to: https://sh.itjust.works/post/15859195

From other conversations that I've read through, people usually say "Yes, because it's easy on Windows", or "Yes, because they simply don't trust the webcam". But neither of these arguments are enough for me. The former I feel is irrelevent when one is talking about Linux, and the latter is just doing something for the sake of doing it which is not exactly a rational argument.

Specifically for Linux (although, I suppose this partially also depends on the distro, and, of course, vulnerabilites in whatever software that you might be using), how vulnerable is the device to having its webcam exploited? If you trust the software that you have running on your computer, and you utilize firewalls (application layer, network layer, etc.), you should be resistant to such types of exploits, no? A parallel question would also be: How vulnerable is a Linux device if you don't take extra precautions like firewalls.

If this is the case, what makes Windows so much more vulnerable?

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

I do, for three reasons:

Hackers. It's unlikely that anyone would hack my webcam, but there's always a chance. Maybe I'm paranoid, idk.
Hardware exploits. Three of my laptops are too old for me to update the firmware with fwupd, so I cover the webcams in case there's some critical hardware-level vulnerability which could be exploited; or in case one of the three-letter agencies are in there.
Consequences. Despite the incredibly low chances of anything happening whatsoever, the possible consequences are too bad for me to want to risk it.

I'm paranoid, aren't I...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

And for me: 4. It makes it a lot harder to accidently turn my camera on in meetings (a different form of privacy)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Also, it's incredibly low effort to cover it. There's no subscription plan for covering a webcam.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Security is always applied in layers. If you aren't inconvenienced by it, it's a really solid layer to use. Doesn't matter how 'paranoid' you are, it's a good strategy.