TIL that a high school in Pennsylvania issued an Apple MacBook to each of its 2,306 students, then remotely activated the webcams to spy on the students at home.
TIL that a high school in Pennsylvania issued an Apple MacBook to each of its 2,306 students, then remotely activated the webcams to spy on the students at home.
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Am I the only person that immediately covers their webcam with Scotch's Magic Tape? It frosts the image so that it doesn't look like it has been covered but rather that it is extremely smudged and thus only silhouettes can be somewhat discerned.
Thankfully most laptops I see now come with a built in physical cover for the webcam.
And in context of this post…Mac laptops do not. So the scotch tape (or black tape) idea is sound.
The issue with those is that you might get told to uncover your camera. With Magic Tape you can always say that it is uncovered. Light goes through, so you can pretend that maybe the camera is busted.
If they tell you to uncover your camera at home then we got problems.
All the time in the corporate world. We have clients that require their employees to be on camera during Teams calls. We have it under our agreement with our clients that being on camera is at our employee's discretion. Because clients often provide us with laptops to access their networks, we cover our cameras with tape and ask that the laptop be put in our storage cases when not in use. Also, if one of our employees is working on more than one client, no two client laptops can be on and out of their case at the same time.
Yeah but that's a defined period on a video communication app. If I'm getting changed in my room and I get a message about my camera...
Hey maggoty!
Hi Maggot! Slow day?
If I'm getting changed in my room and I get a message about my camera...
That is unjustifiable but not what I mean. An ex colleague of mine runs a company with some really questionable policies, but if you want to work there you have to agree. One of those policies is that your camera has to be on at all times during business hours. If you live in a studio apartment, then you better get dressed in the bathroom.
Again though, connected to an agreed time frame and with compensation. That's a shit contract but one nonetheless. You keep bringing these examples and it's going to start looking like you're okay with the school spying on kids.
On the contrary, I think the practice is despicable. I don't trust that companies or schools, or individuals in general will refrain from abusing power. Just because I do not trust, doesn't mean I condone.
Once my colleague shifted into that dystopian business model which also included idle timers, key loggers, etc., I drifted away from him, as did many others in our group. The fucked thing about it all is that thanks to that, he is now a billionaire. This world is fucked.
It's exploitation all the way down. Always was, but it doesn't always have to be.
We put pimple patches on everything, they just fit right on. The acid might be affecting something, but stuff still seems to be okay. Patch on the mic, patch on the camera.
*Patches pop right off and are translucent. So yeah, same idea here. But also magic tape is the tits and idk why the hell people are downvoting Jo. Ya ding-dongs!
Cut that reddit bullshit out.
Don’t forget the mic
DELL laptops are neat in that they let you disable all these in the firmware.
Even neater if there is a hardware switch to enable/disable on the fly.
it is best to switch to Linux so the webcam doesn't work even if you wanted to
(old joke I know)
Dell work laptops and all in ones have had a manual slide shutter for years.
But not mic, the mic and camera should have physical ways to disable.
Maybe if it was something like this where it’s not my laptop but I’m not worried about people hacking my personal computer
Nah, all the nerds I know do it. Not that you're a nerd Jo, you're cool af. But nerds can be cool, too! But Jo...ain't no nerd!
