Are You Being Watched?

Voyeurism

The act of one obtaining sexual gratification from observing unsuspecting individuals who are partly undressed, naked, or engaged in sexual acts; broadly :  one who habitually seeks sexual stimulation by visual means.

One of the crimes I despise most is voyeurism.  Not only does this crime violate peoples' privacy, the perpetrator goes the extra step and distributes this violation online for other perverts to further violate the victims' personal life. Imagine you most intimate moments captured on video and distributed online for others and possibly being exposed to the wrong people. Aside from extortion, the humiliation and questioning of your integrity is now in question. 

So how do you protect yourself from this perverted crime? Well, for starters, read the

Safety in a Hotel post here http://adventpersec.blogspot.com/2014/01/safety-in-hotel.html

Aside from being spied on in hotels and other places, you must consider places like your own home and other familiar places where webcams are installed. Since the advent of webcams, perverts with basic hacking abilities have figured out how to hack into commonly used webcams people use every day for security and other purposes. 

Webcams are great for many uses but unfortunately, developers did not consider security when developing the cams.  Therefore, many webcams out there are streaming video with absolutely no security from hacking or "tapping in". Since most webcams are connected to a computer, once a hacker gains access to your computer, the webcam is under full control of the hacker to turn on and off as he wishes.

What happens once this happens? It get's post online on sites such as, http://www.opentopia.com/ and http://www.insecam.org/ These are just two site where webcams are streamed but there are many many more.

The webcams on these sites have been easily hacked because most are not secured or password strength is easily guessed. Is your password strong enough? Or, are you more concerned with convenience. Are you willing to risk your webcam capturing your private moments? One simple solution is to cover your webcam lens with a piece of tape or disconnect it until you need to use it. 

Don't let your private moments go viral.