So ten minutes ago I'm sitting here at my laptop which has a built in camera and all of sudden the light went on and it started to record. I quickly got out it's view. I shut it down and started to run my anti malware and soon I'll run my anti virus programs.
So assuming I wasn't just hacked or something, what caused this?
Nothing says spying like a bright green light turning on top of my laptop and the program opening up showing whats being recorded.
But yeah, I did a complete scan of my system and nothing came up. So I just made sure the camera program is disabled so it can't do anything more. Though there are chances it was glitched or something but I can't help but fear I was hacked or there is a virus/malware on my laptop my programs aren't detecting.
Could it be possible you accidentally hit a short cut key combo or the record button on your laptop keyboard if your computer have a keyboard combo or record key which launches a program to record yourself?
I think one of my old Logitech Webcam came with software which you can set to record yourself by hitting a shortcut key on the keyboard.
Maybe you click your mouse's right-click button with your body, arm, finger, or hand without realizing you were clicking on the button, and launch the webcam software by accidentally clicking on a shortcut icon for the webcam software on your desktop, system tray, quick launch toolbar, startmenu on the Startmenu toolbar because the cursor was over a shortcut icon while you were clicking on the mouse without realizing you are clicking on the shortcut.
Most webcam software automatically turns on a webcam when you launch the program from a shortcut icon.
Indeed, a drop mouse can launch programs if your mouse somehow droped with the right button hitting something, or if you slammed or put the mouse on the arm rest too hard. The vibrations from the slam might of caused a click.
I wonder could it have been a internet website which caused your webcam to go on there are some websites like Google+ hangout, Ustream, BlogTV, etc which can turn on your webcam when you visit a site, so you can video chat with people.
I don't think it'd be the CIA, FBI or any of the other alphabet soup enforcement agencies trying to spy on you. But I wouldn't dismiss that your computer has been infected by a virus or other malware which has given someone else access. Sometimes it can be hard to detect those malware programs (especially if they're rootkit level) like if they're brand new and definitions for them aren't out yet. (Remember that virus protection relies primarily on detecting already known issues. Most have a heuristics to detect new threats but they're not a guarantee and they can be fooled or avoided depending on your settings.)
So I'd suggest keeping your anti-virus up to date. (Ensure your AV has the latest version installed too since some people forget about that and think only definition database needs to be updated. But having an out of date Anti-Virus can leave you vulnerable too since viruses can just target it to disable it.)
If you don't have a firewall installed on your computer, take the time to get one set up. (I've always had good luck with Comodo. It's free and features some pretty advanced capabilities that allow you to see where you're connecting to and what programs are trying to connect. So you can use that to figure out if you're infected with something because a program that has no reason to connect out is trying to.)
While you're looking at software that can be accessed by websites or services (like various apps for Youtube or video chat on MSN/skype), make sure you have them set to not to activate automatically.
Also look out for your flash permissions because if you aren't careful they can be set to allow certain sites to access your camera/microphone.
I use the windows default one, I know that's not top teir but it works but now that I think I should look into Comodo since I got a laptop that people are more likely to go after.
This just happened again! So I used 'Should I remove it' program and removed the camera program completely. Very odd this came back on since I disabled it.
