14 DAY TRIAL // Covering the webcam of the laptop with a small piece of tape is something that so many people do, so a number of PC manufacturers tried to respond to this growing trend with a physical kill switch.
This isn’t the case of Apple, who not only that doesn’t offer a kill switch for the webcam on its MacBooks, but it also recommends against using tape to block it. This is because it can damage certain features of the laptop, such as the sensors that are placed around the front-facing camera. Or at least, that’s what the Cupertino-based tech giant claims.
Meanwhile, Purism, one of the companies that are betting big on privacy for its Linux laptops, keeps investing in new physical kill switches, explaining that nothing beats such a solution when it comes to protecting user privacy.
And more recently, the company announced that Librem 14 would come with a kill switch for the microphone too, including even for those that are connected through the headphone jack.
All-in on kill switches
In other words, if you’re using headsets with a built-in microphone, this kill switch disables the mic but leaves the audio to work properly so you can continue to listen to any sound that comes through this port.
“While covering your webcams with tape is better than nothing (even if Apple has no tolerance for webcam covers), that only solves half of your privacy issues. Even if a snoop can’t watch you through a webcam cover, they could still listen to you so we’ve made sure our camera/microphone kill switch disables the webcam at the top of the laptop screen and the embedded microphone,” Purism says.
“With the Librem 14 we have enhanced this kill switch so that it also disables the microphone in the headphone jack while leaving audio out unaffected. That way if you happen to leave a headset plugged in–which is common in the age of quarantined video chats–you can use the hardware kill switch to disable all microphones, even ones connected through the headphone jack.”
Meanwhile, if you’re looking for something that’s a bit fancier than a piece of tape to cover your webcam, this super-affordable “gadget” can be yours from eBay for just a little over $1.