Mark Zuckerberg, hoodie-wearing billionaire, philanthropist, owner of an incredibly fluffy dog, and CEO of Facebook, took a photograph of himself recently to celebrate Instagram growing to 500 million users, which is roughly three-quarters of the population of Europe. This Facebook-owned app, clearly, is ridiculously popular.
Some eagle-eyed perusers of the web, however, have noticed something slightly odd in the Zuckerberg selfie: He appears to have put some masking tape over his laptop. It looks like he’s taped over the laptop’s microphone too, as pointed out by some on Twitter. As reported by Gizmodo, Zuckerberg has sent photographs and videos of himself sitting and working by this exact desk before, so it’s likely his desk in this new photo.
So why is he appearing to commit this slightly strange act of tape-based anarchy? Well, as we reported just recently, the director of the FBI does precisely the same thing, because hackers have been known to break into people’s computers and access their webcams – something the FBI itself has been able to do for some time.
Ironically, Director James Comey once said that “absolute privacy” hinders the FBI’s ability to conduct its investigations, implying that people should accept some degree of surveillance in order to be protected by the government. However, he later admitted to covering up his own webcam after feeling uncomfortable at being spied on based on this exact principle.
So should you cover up your own webcam, and perhaps even your microphone, just in case someone decides to literally peek into your life? Well, to be honest, that’s entirely up to you, but the chance of it happening to you is probably quite low, and even if it does, you probably won’t realize.
