Who is watching you now?

You've probably heard the recent scandal about a public school near Philadelphia that enabled teachers and administrators to turn on the webcam in school-issued laptops. Apparently, and allegedly, someone used the feature inappropriately and was found out. The kid's family is suing the school in federal court.

These articles summarize the story:
Washington Post
CNN
Arstechnica

Let's be clear that it was not the school's intent to be kiddie voyeurs, but rather to recover the laptops if they went missing. You have to wonder who thought this would be a good system, and who didn't think about the incredibly bad possible consequences. Thinking a little more about it, you know there are other, better, more appropriate systems already available for recovering lost laptops using GPS. Companies like Absolute Software, for example, seem to have a pretty good solution.

Poor decision making aside, the case has really struck a nerve with the press and public. People really value their privacy, and the thought that someone could turn on that little webcam and watch you feels like a violation.

Have you thought about your webcam? How do you know it is not on right now? Oh sure, the little light isn't on, right? That doesn't mean anything, you know. You can go into your camera settings and disable it. A hacker can do the same, allowing him to turn it on and monitor you without your knowledge.

Feel better? Good, just trying to help.

This year 75% of all laptops will ship with webcams. Your next laptop will probably have one too. What can you do about it?

This case interested me because Oculis Labs is all about personal privacy. Our PrivateEye product is designed to stop people from reading your screen. It turns out it has a great side-benefit too: PrivateEye stops other applications from grabbing your webcam and spying on you. That's right: if you want to stop someone turning on your webcam and watching you feed the cat, or whatever, run out right now and install PrivateEye (you can get it here).

Feeling better now? Next question: how do you know your microphone is turned off too?...