[ioquatix]

We used to do this in a school - it wasn't creepy - hear me out:

We had labs of iMacs and if anything happened to a machine, kids would (more often than not) just yank the power cord. Occasionally this would foobar the machine entirely and create unnecessary work. We couldn't catch the culprits.

So, if the machine managed to boot up successfully, after an unexpected power loss, we would take a photo using the built in camera and send it along with a ticket to the job queue, as well as do a complete re-image of the machine (automatically).

The number of funny photos we collected of kids just starting at the computer with WTF looks on their faces. But - from these photos we at least had the opportunity to educate the individuals about how to look after the computers a bit better.

[ZeroGravitas]

There was a minor scandal a few years ago when a school was sending laptops home with kids and randomly snapping photos via the webcam for similar reasons

I think this is the original story, you can follow the "related stories" links at the bottom to see how it developed:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/02/school-under-fir...

[jes5199]

That's creepy.

[hackuser]

Couldn't you just identify the user by their logon?

[rtkwe]

It's been a while but I don't think the old iMacs at my elementary school had individual user logins at the system level. For things like the reading test program there was a login I think but not for the whole machine.

[ioquatix]

Bingo!

[kbenson]

You're assuming there were usernames and passwords. For consumer grade devices in decades past, that was not the norm.

[nebabyte]

"...

Damn it!"

[hackuser]

Fair point.

[ioquatix]

Haha :D