[Nursie]

Depends what your threat model is?

Nobody but Abby and Ben care if Ben is caught admitting he cheated on Abby. But naked images of Abby can head off into the ether and be propagated more or less forever, turn up on hate sites, be detrimental to careers etc.

If your threat model is leaking company secrets then sure, microphone bad, as is anything having access to any hardware on your machine.

So sure, maybe people ought to be more concerned about microphones as well, rather than instead.

[ohhnoodont]

My point is that the threat model is backwards. The threat associated with a camera is the least severe compared to anything else a malicious person could do with access to your computer. Recored conversations, chats and email, browsing history, etc are all much more likely to result in harm if leaked than a recording of you innocently in your home.

> Nobody but Abby and Ben care if Ben is caught admitting he cheated on Abby.

That destroys families, standing within a community, and very often careers.

[Nursie]

I don't think it is backwards, personally. The threat of public humiliation, and the capability for someone to spy on what you do in your own home, is worse with the camera.

> chats and email, browsing history, etc are all much more likely to result in harm if leaked than a recording of you innocently in your home.

This is far less of an intrusion for most people than recording what they are actually doing in their own home IRL. People know that information can be hacked, they don't expect and react quite differently to someone actually watching them.

> That destroys families, standing within a community, and very often careers.

Yes, but it doesn't stay on the internet forever in quite the same way.

Now I get to some extent what you're saying - aren't the consequences potentially worse from other forms of information leak?

Maybe. It depends on how you weight those consequences. I'd put (for example) financial loss due to fraud enabled by hacking my accounts as far less important than someone spying on me in my own home. Even if they didn't use that to then extort me, and were using the footage for ... uh ... personal enjoyment. I think a lot of people will feel the same way. The material consequences might be lesser, but the psychological ones not so much. Not everything is valued in dollars.

[ohhnoodont]

I think we may just be bumping into cultural differences here. I grew up in a household were being naked around family members was common. I spend time in clothing-optional spaces. I rarely draw the blinds on my windows, etc. I'm not concerned with what other people think in this way and such images could never be used to extort me. Consider the case of Germany - people there are extremely concerned about their privacy and data protection. At the same time public nudity is an entrenched cultural norm.

It's also known that people are not very good at assessing risk. People are more word about dying at the hands of a serial killer than they are of dying in a car crash or slipping in the shower. I feel you're underplaying the psychological harm of having all of your data crawled through by a creep (that would include all of your photos, sites visited, messages sent, everything).

All I can really say is that if someone gained access to my machine, the camera would be the least of my concerns. That's true in nearly every context (psychological, financial, physical, etc).

[rocqua]

Empirically, most low level extortion does seem to be about leaking video. I would see a threat model based on 'criminal wants to extort me for money'. As more reasonable than 'creep wants to look through my computer for creeping'. And it seems like extortion focusses on video, so that is the bigger threat. Even if it is less invasive.

I presume the reason behind this is that video is much more likely to be re-shared. Sending bob a zip of someone's inbox is unlikely to be opened, and even less likely to be shared with strangers. But send bob a video of Alice, and he might open it. Heck, he might not know what the video is until he opens it. So even if he is decent, he might still see it. And if he is less decent and shares it, strangers are much more likely to actually view it.

[Thorrez]

I think extortion in the form of "I've encrypted your data, pay to get it back" is much more common. Ransomware. It's scalable, automatable. Extortion of video is harder to automate.

[Nursie]

I think, though am prepared to be wrong, that you'll probably find yourself in the minority there.

It's not just about nudity and extortion, but someone having access to watch you, whenever they feel like, in your safe space. That sense of violation that people also feel when (for instance) they have been the victim of burglary - the missing stuff is often secondary to the ruined sense of security. There's a vast difference between leaving your curtains open and having someone spying on you from inside your own home.

Is it rational to put this above other concerns? That's a whole different debate and not one I'm particularly interested in. But it explains why people are concerned about cameras over 'mere' data intrusion.

[hunter-gatherer]

I'm not arguing a point here, but I'm curious what the actual number of instances exist where someone is naked or in some other extortionate way (accidently of course) potentially exposed from the position of their webcam. I too would be much more concerned about my microphone, where I know one had conversations that in front of or next to my machine that I wouldn't want "out there". In terms of where my camera is, I woukd imagine they would catch me picking my nose every so often but that's about it.

[rocqua]

People watch porn on their laptops. Even just your orgasm face would be embarrassing for most people.

[joeblubaugh]

> Nobody but Abby and Ben care if Ben is caught admitting he cheated on Abby.

This isn't true at all, even for private citizens. Your friends, parents, children, and colleagues are all likely to care.

[Nursie]

It's very limited, it's certainly not going to be passed around like naked pictures could be.