Covering your webcam is pointless
Covering a laptop webcam is a low-cost precaution against a documented and real category of malware called remote access trojans that can activate a camera without the indicator light turning on in some cases, a practice endorsed publicly by figures including former FBI Director James Comey rather than being an irrational fear.
What we know
Covering a laptop's built-in webcam with tape or a physical slide cover is sometimes characterized as an excessive or paranoid precaution, but it responds to a well documented and real category of malware, generally called remote access trojans or RATs, that can grant a remote attacker control over an infected device's camera and microphone without the device owner's knowledge or consent.
This is not a hypothetical or fringe concern. Security researchers have documented and prosecutors have brought criminal cases against operators of RAT malware and associated ratting communities for years, including a widely reported 2013 Miss Teen USA case in which the winner's laptop webcam was compromised by a former classmate using RAT software to capture images without her knowledge, a case that received substantial mainstream news coverage and contributed to broader public awareness of this risk. The FBI has separately investigated and prosecuted numerous webcam-related RAT cases involving both extortion, sometimes overlapping with sextortion schemes, and voyeurism.
Former FBI Director James Comey publicly stated in a 2016 conference appearance, widely reported by outlets including the Guardian and BBC, that he personally puts a piece of tape over his own laptop's camera, explaining that he had seen the FBI's own security briefings on this exact threat and found the precaution reasonable given the demonstrated risk, a comment that drew notable public attention specifically because it came from the head of the United States' primary federal law enforcement and counterintelligence agency rather than from an ordinary consumer security advocate.
A common counterargument to the webcam-covering practice notes that most laptops include a small LED indicator light that illuminates whenever the camera is actively capturing video, theoretically alerting the user to unauthorized activation. Security researchers, including a widely cited 2013 study from Johns Hopkins University, demonstrated that on at least some laptop models of that era, the camera's LED indicator and the image sensor were controlled by separate, independently addressable hardware components, meaning sufficiently sophisticated malware could activate the camera sensor without triggering the indicator light on certain hardware designs, undermining the assumption that the LED light provides a fully reliable warning on all devices.
Apple and other manufacturers have since made hardware-level changes intended to more tightly couple the camera sensor and indicator light circuitry, reducing the feasibility of this specific bypass on newer devices, though the underlying broader risk that RAT malware can activate a webcam without an obvious visual cue, particularly on older or less tightly integrated hardware, has not been eliminated entirely across all devices.
Security experts generally characterize webcam covering as a reasonable, low-cost, and low-effort precaution rather than either a strictly necessary defense or an irrational overreaction, noting that it addresses a documented threat category directly and costs essentially nothing, even as more fundamental protections, such as keeping software updated, avoiding malicious downloads, and using reputable antivirus software, remain the more consequential lines of defense against the malware that enables this kind of camera compromise in the first place.
Common claims
- Only paranoid people cover their webcamsFalse. FBI Director Comey and numerous security professionals publicly recommend this practice.
- The webcam indicator light always shows when the camera is activeFalse. Security researchers have demonstrated that on some devices the indicator light can be bypassed by malware.
- RAT malware that hijacks cameras is theoretical, not a real threatFalse. The FBI's December 2024 HiatusRAT advisory documents active webcam-targeting malware in the wild.