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Comment by martinced | Hacker News Reader

Which is why I hate laptops on which you cannot physically block the webcam. Laptops used to have a little slider that could cover the webcam but nowadays they don't anymore!?

I love my MacBook and MacBook Pro but... I'm putting a little piece of paper on the webcam "just in case".

Oh and the difference between nowadays and BO in the 90's is that nowadays virtually everybody who has a laptop has a webcam. That's quite a big difference.

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The green light next to the webcam will come on when the camera is in use on MacBooks. It is programmed to come on at the hardware layer so unless somebody has physical access to your MacBook then it will always come on.

It's true the light will come on, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to get away with surreptitious monitoring. Remember the controversy in 2010 in the Lower Merion School District?

* http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/school-district-hal...

* http://www.pcworld.com/article/190101/article.html

I taped a piece of paper over my webcam and then cut out the middle. I slide a second piece of paper into the "cup" this makes to block the camera, but can easily remove it if I want to actually use the webcam.

Electrical tape is good for blocking webcams.

I've always heard that bandaids are the way to go - electrical tape can gunk up your webcam when you actually want to use it.

I have had some success with aluminum foil (the kind you might want to use in a kitchen) -- place that over the webcam lense and then use whateever tape you want to use to hold it in place.

I have my camera set to take a picture every 20 minutes, but when I need privacy I just stick a post-it over the thing, and fold it down.

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