[tokamak-teapot]

If you're on MacOS, open 'Audio MIDI Setup' and look at 'Built-in Microphone'. You can tick the 'Mute' box next to 'Master' and your microphone is now muted independently of Teams, WebEx, or whatever.

It's not a physical switch, but it's a good second safeguard. Teams is even polite enough to tell remind you that you're muted because it can detect this.

A slightly folded post-it note also works well as a camera cover that's easy to remove and easy to replace if you lose it. I also find that when I'm about to join a call and my video's dark pink (rather than black), it's a good reminder I have my 'shutter' in place and haven't noticed, despite it being physically in front of my face.

[WalterBright]

Software switches are always hackable. Never ever rely on one.

Half of hacking exploits would go away if there was a physical write enable switch on device ROMs.

[filleduchaos]

People's threat model isn't always some malicious hacker with access to their machines. The vast majority of the time people simply want to be sure that the video conferencing software they deliberately installed on their non-compromised machine isn't accidentally transmitting the sound of them eating lunch to the call they deliberately joined. I'm not sure pushing back on tips about how they can reasonably accomplish that because "software solutions can be hacked!" is particularly helpful.

[WalterBright]

Because it seems every day I read about some software hack draining away all the information on a "secure" computer. "Secure" software is a fantasy. Hardware switches are secure.

[lukifer]

As much as I'd still like a physical mic kill-switch on MacBooks (if any company has its interests aligned with privacy-signaling, it's Apple), this is a very useful tip, thanks for sharing!