Is your webcam spying on you?

There have been reports recently that it is possible for a web page to activate the webcam in a Mac computer in order to spy on you. Websites can certainly activate a webcam if you have one, such as the iSight camera that is built into iMacs and MacBooks and you may have used these facilities to take a photo or a video clip and post it on the web. You can do it at Facebook for example. However, they should not be able to do it without your knowledge or permission.

Do websites secretly activate the webcam and spy on you though? Is it possible to activate it without your knowledge?

Here is a link to the blog that highlighted the problem and another blog, and here are two demos of the security flaw: demo 1 and  demo 2. I have to say that I can't get either of the demos to work, so maybe this security flaw has been fixed.

However, when one security hole is plugged, often another one opens up. We will just have to wait and see. It's not the first time I've heard of webcams being activated and it has been going on for years.

My advice: Never sit naked at your computer! You never know who might be watching!