My Pinephone has a switch for the microphone and also my Pinebook Pro laptop. But I also would agree that this is exotic hardware.

I have an old iPhone 7 which has an audio IC issue and the microphone is physically disconnected. Calls don’t work, video records without sound etc. need to connect an external microphone to have one.

Apart from the inconvenience it was somehow liberating knowing there is no microphone physically active.

Framework laptops have the same solution.

Recommendation engines work on vast amounts of data they have on you and whatever made you speak about thing X was likely preceded by your internet activity which is not very unique as a precursor to speaking about X. In other words, if other people do Y on the internet and then end up doing stuff related to X, the recommendation engine will show you X just because you also did Y.

The other explanation is one of your contacts who were part of the conversation did things that either directly related to thing X, which you spoke about, or something the algorithm see other people do that relates to X, and you got shown ads based on your affiliation to this person.

I've also worked at FAANG and never seen proof to such claims anywhere in the code, and with the amount of people working there who care about these issues deeply I'd expect this to leak by now, if this happens but is siloed...

> I think it's true since far too many times obscure things I've spoken about appear in ads soon after the conversation

People have been making claims like this since at least the early 90s, about TV then, and no one ever credibly claims to have worked on something like this. I've worked with purchased ad data and I've never seen this data or anything that implies that it exists. It seems far more likely that its a trick of memory. You ignore most ads you see, but you remember ones that relate to odd topics that interest you.

Reminds me of the chrome bug I filed years ago that is still unfixed. An extension with access to all browsing tabs can open a hidden iframe to a website that commonly would have mic and camera permission (like hangouts.google.com), and then inject its own JavaScript into that hidden iframe to capture mic or camera.

For this to work hangouts.google.com had to not include the HTTP header to block iframing but thankfully if you make up a URL the 404 page served on that domain does not include that http header.

Just a personal anecdote: I don't have a dog, but my grandma has two. Once, while visiting her, the dogs were barking a lot. Almost immediately I started receiving ads for dog food in my cellphone.

It's not only a teenager or college kid issue. I've seen adults with a computer in their bedroom because it's a kind of private space where they don't expect anybody to inadvertently bump into it.

My laptop is in my bedroom in winter, right now, because it's one of the smallest rooms and I can heat it easily. I use it in other parts of the house in the other seasons. I do have a sliding cover on the camera. I bought it years ago. The main issue is the microphone.

This would've been blackmail 20 years ago.... nowadays it's just "of course you know, I shared my OF likes publicly", will not even raise an eyebrow; or perhaps I'm living in too bohemian society circles

I received a phishing email from this campaign or a similar one several months ago. The email opened with my name and contained a Google Maps photo of a house where I'd lived 8 years before. The author claimed to have hacked my laptop and captured videos of me doing embarrassing things. They would release the videos unless I paid them $1000 in Bitcoin. I searched and it's an extremely common scam, but I did panic for a few minutes.

Excellent blackmail against teenagers. Pointless against me as an adult.

Eh, random utterances are more common than you think. Especially amongst older people. Most will know at least a couple family members who tend to mutter random things to themselves.

Nobody who is themselves sane is going to judge another for random crap they say when they think themselves alone.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that 'everything' is a thermometer, on the basis that many things behave differently at different temperatures.

You can also use an LED as a light sensor.

and I also came across a YT vid of a console that used a piezo electric speaker for motion sensing.

I wonder if you could use a track pad to pick up sound.

Yeah, but they aren't an input device with an amp wired in the right direction and an A/D converter to read it out.

I use painter’s tape for a similar effect.

That's what they said about the first gen Facetime cameras. "oooh don't worry, it's controlled in hardware!"

We have no way of verifying that anything they said in that document is true.

Obviously the camera is also 'disabled' when the lid is closed regardless of the controlling circuitry. So while that's a good feature, it's not relevant.

My point is that the threat model is backwards. The threat associated with a camera is the least severe compared to anything else a malicious person could do with access to your computer. Recored conversations, chats and email, browsing history, etc are all much more likely to result in harm if leaked than a recording of you innocently in your home.

> Nobody but Abby and Ben care if Ben is caught admitting he cheated on Abby.

That destroys families, standing within a community, and very often careers.

I'm not arguing a point here, but I'm curious what the actual number of instances exist where someone is naked or in some other extortionate way (accidently of course) potentially exposed from the position of their webcam. I too would be much more concerned about my microphone, where I know one had conversations that in front of or next to my machine that I wouldn't want "out there". In terms of where my camera is, I woukd imagine they would catch me picking my nose every so often but that's about it.

> Nobody but Abby and Ben care if Ben is caught admitting he cheated on Abby.

This isn't true at all, even for private citizens. Your friends, parents, children, and colleagues are all likely to care.

This raises a different but related question. In what world should a victim of a crime be extorted for doing innocent things in their home. If a peeping tom took a photo though a window, could that be used to extort someone?

When people are extorted for these kinds of things it's usually catfishing that leads to sexual acts being recorded. That's not related to cybersecurity.

A ranfom thought, that probably won't cover all cases: a second LED or a colour LED. One LED/colour indicates the camera is active, the second can be on for a longer period of time (and perhaps dim as time goes on). I prefer the second LED option since it is better for us colourblind folks, though I suspect there would be more resistance to the idea.

And, of course, covers are an option.

I've seen HP desktops that have a closeable camera cover, and Lenovo does on some ThinkPads [1], so probably others do too. Laptops usually have very little depth available in the screen part though, which is why most laptop cameras are crappy (exceptions include Surface Pro and Surface Book, which have more depth available and so much better cameras than most, but no cover - at least their camera light is not software controlled).

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/lenovo-thinkshutter-laptops-...

Higher end Lenovos and Dell Latitude / Precision tend to. Was one reason why I went for a Latitude 74XX rather than a 54XX or 34XX when looking at them last time.

I had a closable cover and someone shut my laptop with enough force that the cover caused the screen to break. Be careful when closing.

I also purchased a cover for mine, although in a pinch, the removable stickers on fruit work well.

I have a sticky piece of post it note more or less permanently affixed over my camera.

My Thinkpad does.

Thank you for the clarifications. Armchair (well, workbench) engineering strikes again haha!

If you are designing an ASIC for the camera, you can include all the required logic gates to control the LED for a cost that is close to zero. It wouldn't impact the production cost of the ASIC, whereas a capacitor is an additional item in the BOM (and to be charged it requires current, more than the LED, so the driver in the IC must be bigger).