December 9, 2013
The FBI can now turn on your webcam without the green light activating. The green light lets the user know that they are being recorded. Get out the masking tape or a band aid, and cover your PC's webcam, suggests Theresa Payton, who is a cyber-security authority & identity theft expert and former White House CIO.
Payton appeared on “Fox and Friends” Monday morning live Dec. 9 and she shared with the audience just how easily it is for webcams to be hacked into. According to Tech Eye.net on Dec 9, the FBI can now turn your webcam and your speakers on without turning on the green light.
This is extremely intrusive, but the FBI first developed this malware to enter a suspects webcam and computer that would allow them not only to look through the computer files, but to turn on the PC camera and record the suspect without the green light turning on to indicate a recording is underway.
The suspect that the FBI devised this malware for is still at large, the FBI believes he is in Iran. He was being watched because he made a series of threats to detonate bombs at universities and airports across the U.S. last year.
Now that the FBI has this ability to watch suspects, there’s no telling just how many of these surveillance cases are going on at any given time. The malware used on the suspect was delivered when he logged on to his Yahoo email account. The FBI was to gather details of the websites the suspect visited and to pin point the location of the computer.
"Cover your webcam or close the laptop," suggests Lance Ulanoff, the editor and chief from Mashable.com. Ulanoff appeared on “Fox and Friends” live Monday morning. He suggests not using tape, because if you want to use the camera on your laptop or computer, the residue left from the tape could distort the lens. You can use a band aid if you don’t get the tape on the camera lens.
There you have it, the government has the technology to watch you in your home and they can actually see everything that you do online if they decided that you were someone they needed to watch. The experts say to guard yourself against any unwanted hackers, government or the everyday run-of-the-mill voyeurs. Keep that camera lens covered so no one can hack in and keep an eye on you!