Do employees at your work cover the camera on their laptop?

Repo Man

I'm trying to see how common this is. At my current work I'd guess close to 40% of the employees put tape blocking the camera on their laptop. Knowing some of the people who do it my guess is that they are paranoid they are being watched. Any funny stories related to this?

cyberguypr

We have a bit over 200 laptops with integrated cam. To this day I haven't seen any of them covered with tape. I guess they trust us.

Transatlantic

A good few do cover up where I work, I always get a laugh when I see some of them that have older laptops doing this, all they are doing is covering up the light sensor that detects when the cover is closed

XiaoTech

I did for mine. I know my work can take snapshots of my computer or record all of my calls, but I don't want them to have the ability to see my room when I work from home. :P

mapletune

One of my supervisors used to do this... and i thought it was silly =/

I mean, unless you are purposely getting hacked (which would be a bigger concern altogether) then the webcam light should light up when it's in use.

So... i dunno why anyone would do this =s

YFZblu

Yes - Literally every single one of my Users covers their monitor's integrated webcam. Usually with a business card.

The previous area tech once took shared control of a User's PC via MSoffice Communicator, and as a joke turned on the User's webcam. Since then, the webcams have been covered.

sprint100

Thought I was the only guy that worked at a place where the employees covered their integrated cameras.

onesaint

I wonder what the legality is of a company "secretly" recording their users is.

Almost all of the 100+ employees in my building possessing laptops. I haven't seen one with tape on the camera yet.

pumbaa_g

I dont know about you guys but most good companies have very strict security policies in place in India, to the extent of being paranoid. In some banking backend operations you need to keep all your personal effects in lockers before you enter the work area (including phones). Needless to say that none of the workstations have webcam's and USB is disabled and monitored. Most enterprise laptops/workstations I have seen do not come with the integrated camera option. I guess it is a sign of the times plus the bad rep about security in India. Nowdays most companies are going the extra mile by getting ISO 27000 & 20000 certified to prove to customer's that they have the required governence/process in place to ensure security

YFZblu

sprint100 wrote: »

Thought I was the only guy that worked at a place where the employees covered their integrated cameras.

The hilarious thing is, most of my Users webcam cables aren't even connected; yet they still cover it

NetworkVeteran

YFZblu wrote: »

The previous area tech once took shared control of a User's PC via MSoffice Communicator, and as a joke turned on the User's webcam. Since then, the webcams have been covered.

I also remember a case where a school IT team peeped on the teenage students at home.

I never intentionally use the webcam, so I put duct tape it to be on the safe side. What I do in the privacy of my own home is my business. I'm not just worried about IT departments, but also accidently activating my Webcam when using communicator applications.

MosGuy

I do remote work for a VPS hosting company. Since staff are all techs, I don't believe anyone covers their cam. I've never seen my Mac cam light suddenly pop on & my dell precision doesn't have the optional cam.. I'm probably safe . When I saw the thread title, the movie Antitrust popped to mind

JDMurray

Unless I need it, the webcam sitting atop my monitor is always pointed at the ceiling.

SephStorm

On my personal PC my cam is disabled in the OS. A hacker could re-enable it, but hopefully I would notice something by then.

arwes

No cameras on any of our laptops, but I'm sure it would be covered up by quite a few. In fact, one of the ladies there was certain that the new exit signs we put in had hidden cameras & microphones on them. Every office is bound to have at least one conspiracy theorist LOL.

RomBUS

Nope never seen this done by anyone I know personally or professionally.

hiddenknight821

I don't get it. Why cover webcam when some of us have built-in microphone anyways? Heck, our smartphones could have gotten hacked if anything is possible.

kurosaki00

wow
we do the installations and manage the laptops
why I never thought of this?

al3kt.R***

JDMurray wrote: »

Unless I need it, the webcam sitting atop my monitor is always pointed at the ceiling.

This is exactly my practice too

Mishra

No one at our company covers up their webcam. We aren't very intrusive at all though.

Tackle

No covering of the cameras here.

If someone wants to see me sitting at my desk picking my nose...go ahead.

langenoir

I work at an MSP and have seen this at a few of our clients. Heck, my gf does it on her personal laptop at home and I thought I was paranoid. I don't do it, but I'm starting to think that maybe I should.

saspro

I'm guessing they're covering them up so people don't see them watching pr0n on their company laptops.

the_Grinch

We have a number of webcams (on laptops and desktops) and we have not had any users cover them up. It was pretty funny though, we had some changes with our President and it just so happened to occur when we were installing new inventory software on our machines. Rumor was we were monitoring big time and lots of people yelled at me.

paulgswanson

We don't have laptop cams but we do have these:
CP-9971-C-CAM-K9 NETWORKING TELEPHONY EQUIPMENT IP PHONE CISCO

People just twist em closed. myself included. Otherwise they have a wierd lil glow like HAL 9000.

veritas_libertas

This is a fun thread. I think I may have seen one of our users cover his camera. This could be heavily influenced by the fact that most of our users dock their laptops and then use external displays. I have family that are paranoid enough to cover theirs. Myself?

I don't own a laptop currently, but if I did I would turn if off in the BIOS unless I needed to use it. Paranoid? Maybe, but it doesn't help that I read this book recently: Rootkits: Subverting the Windows Kernel: Greg Hoglund,Jamie Butler: 9780321294319: Amazon.com: Books

nosoup4u

My customers normally do it because we use webex and when you connect a meeting its on by default. I've explained that you can disable that but I guess they find it easier lol

mikeybikes

Some of our attorneys do it for paranoid reasons.

Akaricloud

I've never seen any of our users do that but I can understand the reasoning.

Before I got into IT I used to work with Trojans that allowed webcam traffic to be passed back to the server side without the user on the client side knowing. It's one of those things that definitely leaves people feeling violated since most feel hidden behind their computer until something like this happens.

Is it likely? -No. Possible? -Yes.

Bokeh

Yep, all my users do it. Laptops and the integrated all in one machines. Most use paper and tape, but the best one used SPACKLE to cover it over. When she got fired (for another reason) we went through her PC and she had used a magic marker to try to color it in. Luckily, no damage to the camera or computer.
We do not record, nor look at them doing work, but no matter how many times you tell them this, they still do not believe you.

demonfurbie

i see it all the time with work stuff, defendants covering it up with something

the sad part is that most webcams turn on a light before they turn on but the microphone is just as good