Privacy

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

submitted 8 months ago by Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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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[–] shootwhatsmyname@lemm.ee 9 points 8 months ago

Honestly, I don’t think anyone can actually say 100% for sure that your webcam can’t be accessed. We don’t know what we don’t know—new exploits are discovered every day—thus it’s worth the extra 2 seconds to cover and uncover it.