Member-only story
Arlo’s Indoor Cameras Have a Clever Privacy Feature
The Privacy Shield provides physical proof that hackers aren’t tuning in
If you’ve ever seen the movie Snowden about the life of tech whistleblower Edward Snowden, you probably remember an uber-creepy scene where Snowden realizes that the webcam in his computer is being used to spy on him. After seeing that scene, many people reported covering their own computer cameras with duct tape when they weren’t using them, to keep hackers and the prying eyes of government agencies out of their private spaces.
Fears about being watched through a web-connected camera are totally reasonable. In 2014, the Guardian reported that the UK’s intelligence service had intercepted 1.8 million images from Yahoo Webcam users’ cameras, all without their knowledge. Even if you’re not the target of a national intelligence service, a hacker could easily access your webcam. Such attacks are common — according to research reported by The Conversation, as many as 15,000 webcams globally are entirely unsecured and could be accessed by hackers or anyone with the camera’s IP address.
Many webcam and security camera makers include software controls that purport to disable the device to ensure privacy. These are useful, but they’re flawed. Because the controls exist in the device’s software…
