Webcam led

[anderssonj.com]

Is the green led to the right of the webcam on the top of my MacBook screen hardwired to the power supply of the camera - that is, if I don't see the green led, is there no way that the cam is active? (I'd open the case myself and have a little look, but I'm afraid that that'd do things to my warranty. )

Best regards,
Johnny Andersson, Sweden

 

[eric]

that's how it's supposed to work.

no light, no cam.
green light, cam on.

 

[anderssonj.com]

Still, we don't know (or do we? ) if the led is hardwired to the cam, and not software controlled. I know it'd be way over-engineered to design the hardware so that the led can be separately controlled by software, but you never know...

 

[Starky]

So in other words you want to know if you can set up the LED to do crazy things like flash like mad or maybe morse code? =P

 

[anderssonj.com]

Hehe... No, it's just that I want to be 100% sure that if the LED is no lit, then the cam is not active.

 

[mimi8]

I guess he is asking that question for security issues. Dont know if it is possible, but if someone could hack your webcam and have it active without you knowing. The only way we would know that the cam is on is when we see the green light... but what if the cam could be on without displaying the green light???

 

[christm]

so far on my imac when the led is off then the cam is off/not being used.

just check before you do anything that you may not want ppl to see !
but ya if the led is off then the cam should not be active

 

[Cyclone268]

If i was scared of a hacker looking at me thru my webcam, i would tape a piece of cardboard over the camera =P

 

[Aptmunich]

I'm pretty sure the light is software controlled.

But the only time I've ever heard of it not working is the other way around:
Sometimes the light stays on even after you've closed the application that was accessing the camera.

But I think it's safe to say that you can trust it.

If you're really paranoid, just open a program that uses it and minimize or hide the window.

Then the camera will be blocked from other applications using it.

 

[anderssonj.com]

If the light stays on after you've closed the app that uses the camera, that could mean that 1) the camera and, hence, the led, is still on (but the app doesn't deallocate it before it crashes) - which should mean that any app you open won't have access to the cam, or 2) the app "closed" the camera but not the led.

If case 2) is true, that means that you could write a program that records the camera input without activating the led...

I'm not paranoid, just curious.