If you are like me and stick a piece of tape over your Macs webcam then Objective-See’s Oversight is for you.
Once installed, Oversight sits in your menu bar and runs in the background monitoring your Mac’s mic and webcam, alerting you when the internal mic is activated, or whenever a process accesses your webcam.
The developer of Oversight explains why a tool like Oversight might be beneficial to you:
One of the most insidious actions of malware, is abusing the audio and video capabilities of an infected host to record an unknowing user. Macs, of course, are not immune; malware such as OSX/FruitFly, OSX/Crisis, OSX/Mokes, and others, all attempt to spy on Mac users. OverSight constantly monitors a system, alerting a user whenever the internal microphone is activated, or the built-in webcam is accessed. And yes, while the webcam’s LED will turn on whenever a session is initially started, new research has shown that malware can surreptitious piggyback into such existing sessions (FaceTime, Sykpe, Google Hangouts, etc.) and record both audio and video – without fear of detection.
I run Oversight on both my Macs. You can download and get more information about Oversight here. Oh yes, and by the way it’s free so there’s no reason to not install Oversight to better protect your privacy.
ldstephens 