Should You Cover Your Laptop Camera When It’s Not in Use?

Yes, yes you should.
Hell, I unplug the damned thing when I'm not using it.

Yes. Technically everything is hackable.

Have there ever been cases where this actually happened?
- Yes, several schools have been caught activating cameras in the home, and have punished students for activities seen on those illegally enabled cameras
  Nothing happened to the schools
- Spying trough the webcam?
  Hell yeah. There's even sellers on hacker forums that sell access to the computers of hot girls. It's sick but it happens.
  Most big time hackers don't do this though. They'll have so many computers under their control they don't waste time on singular targets.
  
  Can you provide any sources?

More importantly, run an operating system you can trust.
- I have Linux Mint installed on my laptop, I just don't trust M$ Windows with their AI crap.
  
  another cultist
- No operating system is trustable unless you coded it entirely yourself on an air gapped machine with your own hand crafted compiler, and even then you are still exposed to hardware backdoors
  
  You're confusing "trust" with "can guarantee to beyond a shred of a doubt that the system is not compromised in any way".
- that's prettt much impossible without going to insane lengths
  
  linux is literally right there and it works for 90% of use cases.
  lineageos can get annoying, yes, but thats mostly on the manufacturers.
  
  For some, particularly businesses reliant on software that can't perform on anything but Windows (and occasionally MacOS), sure. For individuals it is much easier. Installed Linux Mint a few months ago and I set up a VM for the stuff I truly needed some form of Windows for (tried dual booting for a bit but found that inconvenient). None of these are insane lengths, unless the cutoff for that is, "anything above minimal effort."
  
  Is it really insane though?
  Even a decade ago, it took longer to download a Linux distro than it did to make a bootable disc, boot to it, and install.
  Seriously, the very first time I installed Linux on anything was maybe twenty minutes of actual effort total, with the rest being waiting for things to download or process during install. I can't call that crazy lengths. Not everyone is as confident in following instructions and willing to take a risk, but it isn't some kind of hyper specialized skill, and the very fact of a bootable storage means you can verify a given install would work on your hardware.
  Now, changing roms on android? I would agree that doing so is absurdly more difficult than it should be, and there's more pitfalls that can screw things up. But I didn't get the impression you meant that.
  
  Linux?

Can you cover the lens with sandpaper and rub it for a few minutes? Permanent problems require permanent solutions
- This is the energy I’m looking for. Impractical but powerful.
- Most people would like to use the webcam occasionally though.
  
  Chapstick + Webcam + Twist Chapstick on Lens + "The camera looks like that even when I clean it" = Problem Solved

Absolutely, unless you're lucky enough to have a laptop with a Physical killswitch on your Webcam + Mic module, then it's not needed since flipping the Switch physically kills power to the Camera module's USB header.
Framework Laptops have this Feature.
- My Asus has one and I didn't know about it and FOR YEARS I thought my webcam was broken- it wasn't even showing up in the device manager. I bought an external webcam, because I figured it was pooched and I had to use a webcam sometimes, but not often enough to care into looking to get it repaired.
  This is a story about me being dumb.
  
  Maybe that's why many PCs these days don't have them, and also why they don't have network kill-switches anymore. People just got confused and thought something was broken.
- It would give me peace of mind if the switch also slid a cover over the lens. Is there video of people confirming the function of the switch with a voltmeter?
  I wish the framework also had a physical switch for the antenna. At least it's made easy to entirely remove and replace the antenna manually - then using an external antenna has the kill switch of just unplugging it, though it then takes up a port.
  
  If you want that too you could buy one of these covers. I haven't seen any videos of it but running dmesg | grep -i "Camera" seems to confirm that it does cut the connections since the devices disappear.
  Yeah I haven't seen as many computers with Network/Wireless killswitches, they used to be much more common in the past, so for network cutoff your best bet would probably be to disable or remove the onboard Wifi and use an external Wifi card in one of the expansion slots. Ideally you could use something like this to still have a USB A port but also have a Wifi dongle inside it as well.

TL;DR
Yes
Also disable all microphones etc. of course
- Fun fact, every speaker is a microphone and vice versa.
  
  While true, an average speaker isn't sensitive enough to get quality or understandable sound out of, and that's assuming software can be rewritten to accept input from them.
  This isn't a realistic privacy concern imo, but it is a novel fun fact, and if you have a 3.5mm jack you can play around with it on a PC
  
  Two questions:
  Does my soundcard have an ADC wired (directly) to my speakers?
  If yes: Why?
  
  if they have an amplifier that does not work anymore, does it?
  but otherwise that's right, and in laptop speakers this is probably not a barrier

EFF gives out tiny stickers at conventions for that purpose. I've been staring at an EFF sticker for years.

Zuckerberg has been doing this for over a decade.
https://mashable.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-webcam-cover
The answer is yes, obviously duh, yes.

My Thinkpad has a built-in camera cover. I keep it closed unless I'm specifically using it.
- Thinkpads are great that way
- This is the way...

Cover all cameras on all devices.
- Related, when we were shopping for a smart TV last year, it was so difficult to find one without a microphone... I already don't like my phone having a microphone, why would I put it into my bloody TV...
  
  I already don’t like my phone having a microphone
  A phone without a microphone. A phone... without a microphone... is not a phone.
  Can I ask what you use a phone for?
- What about my cameras?

I have a 15+ year old lamp on my desk which has a bulb that gets quite hot. Didn't realize my laptop was directly under it one day. Melted the laptop lid slightly directly where the camera is located.
Everything else works fine except for the camera. I always disabled it in BIOS but now it's physically disabled. Sometimes the adhd solves problems on it's own.

I learned the other day my laptop doesn’t even have a camera. I’ve never noticed in the six months of owning it.
Excellent.
- what kind of laptop is that? I need it
  
  The Asus G15 Advantage from a couple years ago has fairly high end hardware, it comes without a webcam. As an owner of one they have quirks, but can be pretty decent machines if you can find one for cheap.
  
  I got it on a deal. I would post the link here but that feels inappropriate. I bought it from B&H and it’s a Lenovo i5. Please note that the five has nothing to do with the Intel processor family but rather that’s just the name of the laptop.
  I wanted something that was gaming-capable but also admits to the fact that I’m mostly going to do work on the laptop. The ports are in weird locations, and it’s unnecessarily heavy, but I am pleased with it given the main purpose which was to get an effectively desktop replacement that I don’t expect to haul around that often.
  Also, if you do decide that’s a laptop that you want, play close attention to the specifications. They reuse the same laptop name. It’s actually a series of laptops that is updated every year or so and they have different build options.

Oh yeah. Use electrical tape.

I have a cheap garbage windows work laptop without a cover. So I just put a clothesline clip on it at all times.

My framework laptop has a built-in, physical kill switch for both the webcam and mic.
On my desktop pc, I cover the webcam or unplug it entirely until I need it.
- Yeah I use a desktop PC, and like once every 2 weeks I plug in my webcam for a work meeting, the rest of the time I bask in the comfort that my PC has no visual/audio sensors 😌

If you're running Linux, does this still apply!?
- Yes
- Not as much(probably on an order of magnitude less than with windows OSs), but depending on your distro package manager,specfic packages installed and update schedule etc supply chain attacks and other methods of malware injection are still possible,
  it doesn't harm to have your camera covered when not in active use(you can use something like bluetack to cover it if you don't have an in-built slide cover) so why not imo
  https://www.csoonline.com/article/3560646/malicious-open-source-software-packages-have-exploded-in-2024.html <- this could be of some intetest
  
  you can use something like bluetack to cover it if you don’t have an in-built slide cover
  FYI they sell dedicated covers for the Webcam which stick around the camera and can slide to cover it and slide to uncover it. If you don't have a Killswitch on your Camera they're a good thing to have
- as long as you don't use evil apps
  
  All good then.

One of the benefits of using a desktop PC instead of a laptop xd
(Tbh if I had a laptop I would surely cover it up. Not going to trust software with this...)

Should You Cover Your Laptop Camera When It’s Not in Use?
Next, Should you stop saying your password out loud as you key it in? Should you send your toddler to the Catholic Church daycare? Should you trust Nigerian princes?
- On Macbooks the led next to the camera is wired to the camera's power. It's physically not possible to record without the led lighting up.
  
  Unless those Macbook cameras have a physical Killswitch that allows them to stay completely off when you don't want it's probably still a good idea. I mean the indicator can tell you when it's recording. It's not going to prevent it.
  
  You are not gonna notice it taking a quick pic tho