Instagram, that is the picture sharing network, which is owned by Facebook, in recent times touched 500 million monthly active users. Mark Zuckerberg, who is the Facebook CEO, shared a fun picture to celebrate the feat. In the picture, we can see Zuckerberg is holding what appears to be a wooden frame and in the background is his laptop. But it appears that he exposed more than he intended to. For as pointed out on the micro blogging website by Chris Oslen, who is a Twitter user that with a tape, Zuckerberg had covered the webcam of his laptop. But a closer look at the picture reveals that his laptop’s microphone is taped as well.
Take a closer look at the picture and it appears that his laptop’s microphone is taped as well. As Gizmodo wrote, sophisticated hackers are able to be in charge of a laptop’s camera, so it appears that the Facebook CEO is ensuring he doesn’t become a victim of a hacker, by putting a tape on his Macbook’s camera and audio jack. He claims, that he is certain that the picture shows Zuckerberg’s work desk, as in a Facebook Live video a few months ago he had apparently given a tour of the same. It is fascinating to see how a CEO of a company who is often accused of listening to private conversations of users and more, is scared about his own privacy.
Earlier this year, when James Comey, the FBI director was talking about the privacy methods that he uses he said that he often had tape on his laptop’s webcam to protect himself from observation. Washington Post was told, that for several years with the help of their computer’s webcams the US government had been able to secretly spy on its citizens, by Marcus Thomas, the former assistant director of the FBI’s operational technology division in Quantico. Also Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower had also talked about how webcam was used for spying.