Protect your privacy by disabling the webcam and microphone built into your computer.
Who has never been afraid of having their computer’s webcam and microphone hacked and having their privacy displayed on the web? To avoid this, cautious users hide the webcam from and nail the mouthpiece of the built-in microphone to their PC using a piece of tape.
This temporary solution allows a minimum of protection, without preventing them from functioning, which is necessary. But the webcam and the microphone of PCs are used less and less, except perhaps in the professional context, the video calls being more and more often carried out from a smartphone or a tablet.
If you’re one of those people who no longer use these two devices on their PCs, you might be able to supplement using a piece of duct tape with a more drastic solution that will turn them off for good.
1. Open the device manager
On your Windows PC, deploy the Start menu, search for Device Manager in the search box, and open its window.
2. Locate your peripherals
In the list of devices displayed, locate the lines concerning the webcam and the microphone, and deploy the associated menu to reveal all the devices attached to it.
3. Deactivate the device
For each device to be disabled, right click on the device and choose to Disable Device.
Then validate the deactivation of the device by clicking on Yes.
If the deactivation was successful, these two devices should display a small arrow icon on their icon from the manager. Note that you will need to reactivate these two devices if you want to be able to use them again in the future.