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Is Putting Tape Over Your Webcam Actually a Good Idea?:
When you walk around an office or café, you'll often see people using an array of items to cover up their webcam. Sometimes it's tape, post-it notes, folded business cards, stickers, their thumb, or a marlin. I smear peanut butter over my webcam, but chunky peanut butter. It's more secure than smooth.
None of those items came with the laptop upon purchase, and it's easy to make fun of putting something there as paranoid. The idea that someone wants to look through your particular webcam seems a bit narcissistic and on edge, as if we're leaving our house and saying to one in particular, "Please, no cameras."
But while it's absurd that people are putting tape over their webcams, it's doubly absurd that it's actually kind of a good idea.
[...] While we all know there are cameras everywhere, it seems somewhat natural to do what we can to prevent a few of them from looking at us. Even Mark Zuckerberg—the guy with more information on people than the Library of Congress—puts tape over his webcam.
[...] Feel free to feel silly when blocking your webcam, but be silly and safe. If your webcam is covered with a plate of osmium wrapped in blackout curtains and sealed with one of those tire clamps, I won't judge.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MrGuy on Monday January 02, @10:15PM
The very best web camera cover I’ve ever used is one I can’t find commercially, so I make myself.
Get black (color isn’t important - I use black so it hides better) sheet vinyl from Amazon. A long roll of several square feet (more than I’d need for several lifetimes of this hack) is a few bucks.
Then I cut rectangles about 3/4” by 2”. This is large enough to fit over my camera, big enough to handle without dropping, and for within the black bezel around the screen of my MacBook.
No adhesive. It just sticks with static electricity (like colorforms. Remember colorforms?). I move it out of the way when I want to use the camera, and it lives on the lens the rest of the time. Thin and squishy so can’t damage the case or the camera. Not 100% opaque but good enough to make it impossible to make out what’s happening. So ridiculously cheap so I cut dozens of spares. if I ever lose one I don’t miss it.