FBI Director Advises Everyone to Cover Their Webcams

Earlier this year, FBI Director James Comey was snapped with a piece of tape covering the webcam built into the screen of his laptop. Comey admitted that he was “much mocked” for putting tape on his webcam, but that he still does it and advises anyone with an embedded laptop camera to do the same, given the ease with which such devices can be hacked into.

“There’s some sensible things you should be doing, and that’s one of them,” Comey said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies conference (via MSN). “You go into any government office and we all have the little camera things that sit on top of the screen. They all have a little lid that closes down on them.”

“You do that so that people who don’t have authority don’t look at you,” he added. “I think that’s a good thing.”

In addition to Comey, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is a practitioner of covering his webcam with tape, as well the built-in microphone:

3 things about this photo of Zuck:

Camera covered with tape
Mic jack covered with tape
Email client is Thunderbird pic.twitter.com/vdQlF7RjQt

— Chris Olson (@topherolson) June 21, 2016

“I hope people lock their cars,” Comey said. “Lock your doors at night […] if you have an alarm system, you should use it.”

“It’s not crazy that the FBI director cares about personal security as well,” he explained. “So I think people ought to take responsibility for their own safety and security.”