You may think – because it is widely recommended (even Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg does it) – that putting a strip of tape on your Mac’s built-in iSight camera and microphone is protecting you from privacy infringements by strangers (aka “hackers”).
You are wrong! Why?
Tape on the camera may prevent somebody spying on you visually – but this does not prevent anybody hacking your computer and accessing it’s built-in microphone to listen to your conversations! And tape on the microphone spot is by far not making it completely “mute”. Try it yourself – QuickTime is suitable for a quick Audio-Video-Recording…
So tape is just not enough – you do need a software-based solution for full control.
And there is a solution to do just that: OverSight
Install this app on your Mac to have full control whether something accessing your computer’s camers OR microphone is allowed to do so or not. It comes with support for macOS’ built-in Notification Center to notify you every time an app or other software is trying to access the connected hardware camera or microphone.
This is a way better solution to prevent yourself for unwanted privacy infringements.
I think that we should be using both… never knows…
Surely I’d have to be sitting in-front of the computer to see a notification, so I’m not so sure this is a great solution.
Hi trejkaz,
The app blocks any camera & microphone access by default, unless you allow it – it‘s not like „somewhat wants to access your camera – if you don’t decline in 10 seconds I will allow it“.
Even Apple has introduced this kind of camera & microphone access control with the new macOS Mojave, so I think this type of solution is not that bad 😉