Is there a way to see the history of when my web camera has been active? For example during the previous day?
2 Answers
Technically, it is possible to do, but realistically, no.
You might find this possible duplicate of value:
To answer your question you must first understand the webcam is "always active" just like your keyboard or mouse. To see list of active devices:
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
$ xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Logitech Performance MX id=10 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Logitech K800 id=11 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ AlpsPS/2 ALPS GlidePoint id=14 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)] ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)] ↳ Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)] ↳ Video Bus id=7 [slave keyboard (3)] ↳ Power Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)] ↳ Sleep Button id=9 [slave keyboard (3)] ↳ Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_HD id=12 [slave keyboard (3)] ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=13 [slave keyboard (3)] ↳ Dell WMI hotkeys id=15 [slave keyboard (3)]
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$ What you need to look at are the applications that use the webcam such as Skype and see what usage log files (if any) they maintain. If they don't maintain log files you can create a wrapper script to maintain your own log files. It can get really complicated when webcams can be used by the Browser because that could mean downloading Chromium source code and modifying it.
A decade ago people laughed when I put masking tape over the webcam. Now days it is common practice for many. Especially when you learn of all the webcam spying software out there.
A couple years ago I took broken earbuds, cut the wires off to the male jack and plugged it into the microphone jack on the laptop. Now there is something new to laugh at ;)
