OnlyFans, but you don't get paid. And you don't know you're being recorded.

Sorry, for my excessive use of creative license in the title, but it's actually not far from the truth.

Pre covid, webcams were often an overlooked piece of nerd gear. A staple on most laptops, buying a webcam for a desktop was something I would do for clients a couple of times a year. It wasn't my main financial driver as you can see. The webcam tech wasn't too innovative either, the resolution was pretty poor and the sound from its mic can be best described as wanting. If you really wanted to double down on a webcam, the cost for a decent one was "The Rock" one eyebrow raising quickly followed by the letters, "W, T, F!"

With smartphone cameras on the improve year after year, and more apps that take advantage of said smartphone cameras (year after year), why the hell would you want to sit in front of a computer and record yourself (keep it nice now)? With below average video. And garbage audio. You wouldn't. And most didn't.

Then covid hit.

An amusing conspiracy theory during "that time" was that Zoom was partially to blame for the spicy cough. But, if someone were to also add "the webcam manufacturers were in it too!" My "The Rock" one eyebrow would slowly drop followed by the words, "I can see that..."

Sales for them skyrocketed and demand far outweighed supply and those shitty, crappy, and overpriced (for its specs) webcams became the hottest commodity since NFTs (lol, remember those).

WFN (Work From Home) became the internationally celebrated abbreviations of work / life balance and the webcam was front and centre (literally) leading this charge alongside it's conspiracy theory stirring partner Zoom (and it's lesser respected, often mocked, siblings, Teams, and Skype. "Has anyone seen Skype?"). "Webcams were back baby!"

Fast forward to now, and as much as employers try to encourage (or force) people back into the office, the webcam is still the top dog. There're now more people in the game, better video, better audio (they're still damn expensive), and it's safe for me to say, they're here for good. Until some headset comes along which flips the script (trust me on this, it's much further than you think. I started/ended a company trying to figure it out too).

Which all leads me back to the title of my article. I will re-iterate my apology for excessive use of creative license, I was enjoying writing this a little too much.

Your webcam can be hacked. It's a simple as that and the term is called camfecting (a terrible name, honestly). People can see what's going on in your life through your webcam and you would have no idea it's happening. The little light that pops up when it's in use, that can be disabled too. It's not a nice thing to think about (unless you're down for that stuff), but it's true and it happens all the time.

So, what can you do? Well, nothing if you have a OF subscription or Patreon ;) but you can cover it up when it's not in use. You can buy webcam covers from Amazon super cheap and if you have a webcam for your desktop, consider unplugging it if you don't need it.

If you feel you may already be compromised because of your questionable website manners and habits of clicking on unknown email attachments, then a clean slate of your computer may be the go. Even a replacement.

If you've been pretty sensible then common sense will prevail. Don't click on unknown email attachments and avoid "those types" of websites. It's much more likely that a computer is infected by the user itself, than by getting hacked from the outside.

Anti-virus helps too here, but don't think it gives you a license to go rogue. Anti-Virus simply won't block / stop everything, and it never will. So still mind your Ps and Qs when online.

I think that about covers it for webcams and if you want to know more about me and what we do, Get In Touch!

dEx