Computer safety can be a worrying issue, but are we overdoing it by covering our camera lens when browsing the internet? Not really, said Dylan Curran, data consultant, on Today with Sean O’Rourke.
"It’s not exactly paranoia, it’s just taking a little bit of a safety precaution…
"If you give camera or microphone permission to pretty much any app on your phone, they can access both your front and back camera at any time, they can record you at any time they have the app open."
"They can take pictures and videos without telling you, they can upload the pictures and videos without telling you and they can run real-time Facetime recognition on these pictures and videos."
Dylan says we don’t need to worry so much about larger, reputable apps like Whatsapp, but if an app only has a small number of downloads, it may not be such a good idea to grant it camera access.
Recently, voice-activated home technology has been further changing the landscape.
"For instance with the Amazon Echo, you have to say ‘Alexa’ to active it and then it’ll start recording you but now they’re putting through technology where they can record you any time you’re speaking so if you’re casually talking to someone and they say I love skiing, they’ll record that and they’ll give you ads for skis.
"They’ll use the sound to tell when you’re having a shower and then they might give you certain recommendations for having a shower, like they might know that you like going to Starbucks for coffee directly after having a shower or they might know that you like having a glass of orange juice and then they’ll target you with that."
Dylan says it’s not hacking per se, but rather passive data collection and while it may not necessarily be malicious, it’s something consumers need to be aware of.
"The biggest thing is just to be careful on the internet. The best anti-virus is just a little bit of common sense.
"Don’t download things that you don’t think are safe at all and then you can do things like get an anti-virus, use nice long passwords, use different passwords for different accounts, those are pretty much the only things you can really do."
You can listen to the full interview in the video above.
