Just Saying | My iPhone may be spying on me after all, and I don’t trust my TV
Yonden Lhatoo may be a late convert, but he’s beginning to feel that people who cover cameras on their electronic devices with tape may be right after all
I swear I don’t have my tinfoil hat on as I write this. I roll my eyes at conspiracy theories as much as the next sceptic, but maybe some of the paranoia going around is totally justified.
I ran out of a diet supplement recently and visited a random neighbourhood pharmacy to replenish my stock. The next day, I found myself bombarded with internet advertisements for the same product, even though I had not used any mobile or desktop device to look for it online.
Some of my tech-savvy friends, who have taken to covering the cameras on their mobile phones, laptops and TVs with masking tape, suggested right away that my iPhone was spying on me through some app manipulating its built-in camera and microphone.
WikiLeaks says CIA knew how to hack iPhones in 2008
Yes, I know they’re not really suggesting anything new and there’s no shortage of anecdotal evidence like this. But now that it’s actually happening to me, I’m beginning to see all those news reports about hacking and spying by everyone, from unscrupulous advertisers to the NSA and CIA, in a whole new light.
‘It hasn’t happened to me,’ is regular comfort food for denial
We already know how the CIA has been able to break into Apple, Google and Microsoft consumer technology, compromising our not-so-smart phones, computers, TVs and cars.
And yet, so many of us prefer to turn a blind eye to it all. We pretend it’s not happening, or assume it can’t be that serious.
“It hasn’t happened to me,” is regular comfort food for denial. That’s how we tolerate every organised assault on our privacy, and rationalise our apathy and false sense of security.
