Posted on 08/13/2015 1:27:02 PM PDT by UMCRevMom@aol.com
Toronto woman Chelsea Clark recently got a creepy surprise from a stranger on Facebook after watching Netflix with her boyfriend, reports Good Housekeeping.
The message contained pictures from her boyfriend’s laptop webcam of the pair in bed watching the streaming service together. There was only a short message from the hacker, using the name, “Mahmoud Abdo.”
The pair had no idea at the time they were being watched:
“We obviously had no idea it was taking place in the moment, but retroactively it was like a really, really deeply creepy feeling,” the 27-year-old told Newstalk1010. “It was very unnerving. I mean it does feel like there’s someone just in your home with you.”
The Facebook message was even more creepy for Clark because her Facebook settings didn’t allow contact from strangers. The images in the message show how intimately the couple’s privacy was invaded:
Clark reported the incident to police, Yahoo! News Canada reports. The police seized the computer and are analyzing it for clues. The hacker’s Facebook account has been deleted and is believed to have been fake. It’s also thought that the hacker knows the couple because of the connection between her Facebook account and the images taken with her boyfriend’s hacked laptop.
As reported in November 2014, it is really easy to hack into web cameras. One suggestion is to cover the camera lens on your computer or other device and close the laptop or other covering so you cannot be spied on.
Another safety tip is to change the default web camera password for those and other IP camera devices such as nanny cams, baby monitors, and home security cameras to help reduce the risk of them being easily hacked.
> I wonder if she has an ex-boyfriend?
My thoughts too. He could have already known her passwords and set up remote access beforehand
I am mooning you right now.
Can you see me?
This story makes me glad my tv is an old RCA from 1992.
I have black tape over my camera eye on my laptop. If I need to use the camera, I can peel it off.
And the microphone?
This story makes me glad I don’t have a webcam and that I dumped my cable tv years ago. If my television dies (I still watch DVDs) and I have to buy a new one with spyware, it will not be connected to the internet.
There’s a website out there that lets anyone monitor in real time any number of tens of thousands of IP cameras that haven’t had their default passwords changed.
Put one of these up without changing the password, you may as well live in a glass enclosure at the mall.
black electrical tape is your friend
Not much you can do about...turn off the laptop?
Me, too. A long time ago.
from then on ALL of us have taped over the webcam.....
I know it was a virus but still, it was too close to home if they can do that...
Seems to me the ultimate solution is to prevent the laptop from being hacked, period.
Honey, from these comments, I see we are far from the only ones who use black electrical tape on our laptop webcam lens (and thicker covering for the mics on it, too).
Yep, but once the government writes software to troll those camera devices for images of terrorist activity, they'll insist that they need to record everything we do because it's the only way to fight terrorism. But they promise they won't look at the videos unless something gets flagged by their software.
Had to research that one...Christopher Pelant, right?
>>black electrical tape is your friend
On your laptop, yes. But it defeats the purpose of all those other IP cameras that everyone thinks they need to watch over their precious stuff.
Bingo.... virtual OS is also something to consider.
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