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Is there a way to control if your microphone and webcam is on? Or an easy way to securely disable it while you don't need it?

I have a webcam and microphone built in to my notebook, which I never really need. I'm just curious if programs or websites can easily access them.

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I think the only common plugin that can access your webcam or microphone is Flash, and you can configure it to not allow that.

And if you know what driver (kernel module) your webcam uses, you can blacklist that module.

But maybe a more realistic option is to use a browser plugin like NoScript, that allows you to disable plugins like flash for all sites except those you approve of.

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  • Right. I've heard of a modules.blacklist. I should find the modules in lsmod, right? A lot of them have cryptic names, do you know of a quick way to find my two wanted modules?
    – Alexander Engelhardt
    Oct 30, 2010 at 10:28
  • The webcam module will somehow depend on v4l normally. The microphone will be the same module of your speakers, which is maybe not what you want to block...
    – JanC
    Oct 30, 2010 at 10:58
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    @Alexx Hardt Maybe sudo lshw can give you some information, for mose devices there is a line stating something along the lines of "configuration: driver=some_kernel_module"
    – LasseLuttermann
    Oct 30, 2010 at 11:48

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