Mark Zuckerberg Covers His Laptop Camera. You Should Consider It, Too.

In a photo posted to Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook account, he celebrated the growing user base of Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. An eagle-eyed Twitter user named Chris Olson noticed that in the image’s background, his laptop camera and microphone jack appeared to be covered with tape. The taped-over camera and microphone jack are usually a signal that someone is concerned, perhaps only vaguely, about hackers’ gaining access to his or her devices by using remote-access trojans — a process called “ratting.” (Remote access is not limited to ratters: According to a cache of National Security Agency documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, at least two government-designed programs were devised to take over computer cameras and microphones.) Security experts supported the taping, for a few good reasons. The first is that Zuckerberg is a high-value target. The second is that covering photo, video and audio portals has long been a basic and cheap security safeguard.