Today in the world of information technology, hacking has begun to actively develop. An experienced hacker can penetrate almost any computer and get user information, if, of course, the laptop is connected to the network.
Why turn off the camera
Recently, users have complained that their webcam spontaneously turns on. So hackers can see where you are and what they do. In the future, this information can be used in completely different ways, up to the point that you will become a star on YouTube.
How to solve this problem? It's quite simple, you can just turn off the camera until you use it to communicate with friends. How to disconnect the camera on a laptop? You can use 3 completely different methods for this. Let's look at them.
How to disable the camera on a laptop. First way
The easiest way is to close the webcam lens. There are many different blinds on the Internet that will help close the camera. In addition, laptops are now being released that already have these additional protections. Of course, you will not change your computer because of some kind of curtain, but if you do not even want to buy an additional element that will close the lens, you can use the “collective farm” method. We take an insulating tape, a piece of paper and glue the webcam.
As we already found out, this is the easiest way, but at the same time there is one more problem. So we will not turn off the microphone. This is not a big deal, but if you want to completely protect yourself from intruders, you should use other methods.
Second way
How to disable the camera on a laptop Windows 7, 8.1, 10? A more reliable way is to turn off the webcam through the device manager. Using it, you can either disconnect the selected device or connect it back. First, consider how to disable the camera on a laptop.
- Go to the "Device Manager" directory. How to do it? In the search you need to write "Device Manager" and press Enter. In Windows 7 and Windows 8, the search is located in the Start menu, and in the newest version of Windows, the search can be found near the Start menu.
- Go to the “Image Processing Devices” tab, where you can see your camera. As a rule, it has the name of the computer manufacturer. If you need to turn off the external webcam, then go to the tab "USB controllers". Of course, with an external camera a little easier. It can simply be turned off from USB and, if necessary, reconnected.
- Right-click on our camera and select "Disable". Further it is necessary to agree with all warnings.
That's all. Webcam is disabled. Now you need to consider how to turn on the camera.
- Open the "Device Manager" directory.
- We pass to the section "Image Processing Devices".
- Select a webcam and click on it with the right mouse button. In this case, select the “Enable” item and click on the “Yes” button, confirming your action.
As you may have noticed, this is a fairly simple way to turn off the camera, but there is another software method to turn off the camera.
Third way
How to disconnect the camera on a laptop? To do this, we need to install the additional WebCam On-Off program. This is a fairly simple program that does not even require installation, it works right away from the folder.
So, after installing the program, open it. To do this, go to the directory of the desired utility and click on the shortcut with the extension (exe). Unfortunately, the application is in English, but it’s not difficult to guess how to work in it. On the left you can see 3 buttons.
To turn off the webcam and microphone, you must click on the Disable button. And to enable, you need to click on the Enable button. It should be remembered that while turning off the camera, it should not be involved in any applications.
How to disable a webcam on a laptop? As you have already noticed, this is pretty easy to do. You can choose the most suitable method and turn off the camera when not in use.