No amount of microphones will ever be a bigger problem than a single compromising photo or video.

Then you're lacking fantasy.

For example, I'd not be happy having my voice auto-transcribed by some malware as I authenticate to my bank providing my SSN etc (which as an authentication method is of course horribly insecure, but that's a different discussion).

Of course, this will vary from person to person, but as mentioned above, just being able to mechanically cover a camera when required makes it less of an issue for me.

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Loughla 7 months ago | parent [-]

I'm with you. I can recover from nudes of me being on the Internet. That night even help me filter out friends that aren't really friends.

If someone drains my accounts, I'm definitely screwed.

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gambiting 7 months ago | parent [-]

>>If someone drains my accounts, I'm definitely screwed.

You ring your bank and it's reversed almost instantly. Your photos on the internet you have no way of doing anything about them, they are there forever.

	▲	mrweasel 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		Not to downplay the ramification, especially to a young person, but the leak of photos are a passing thing and it's quickly forgotten. Afterwards you're pretty immune, what are they going to do, leak the photos again? A young Danish woman had nude photos leaked by an old boyfriend. She had her friend take better pictures and posted those herself so now no one can find the original photos. Not suggesting that as a solution, but I thought it was a pretty fun response.

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mrweasel 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If an attacker is at the point where they can turn on your microphone, or video, it doesn't really matter anymore, it's been game over for a long time.

This never really registered to me, before a former colleague commented on the nonsense with people putting tape over their camera. If an attacker has access to your camera, or microphone, then they have access to pretty much very thing else. The difference in damage is negligible, it's already total for most.

If people are truly concerned about the camera in their laptop, then keep the computer in a dedicate room, shut it down when your done (or close the lid, if it's a laptop).

Sure it's kinda dumb that the LED is software controlled and that there's not a physical switch for turning off the microphone, but even having those things done correct doesn't negate the amount of damage someone could do with they have that kind of access to your devices.

	▲	abtinf 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		> If an attacker is at the point where they can turn on your microphone, or video, it doesn't really matter anymore, it's been game over for a long time. This is obviously incorrect. There is lots of software that can get access to your camera/microphone but not have access to anything else, like browser-based applications. And on Mac even locally installed applications are limited; getting access to user data directories requires a separate permission grant from webcam access. You might also simply have nothing incriminating on your machine.

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chgs 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I can’t think of much if anything which would be a compromising photo or video from my laptop, but conversations certainly are.

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MattGaiser 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A photo may be merely embarrassing. You could get a lot of immediately useful information hearing my phone calls though.

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goodpoint 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In most business environments it's the opposite.

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bdangubic 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

I am dying for a compromising photo/video leak - I’ll finally be able to convince my wife to start OF channel :)