Why is my isight camera always on? Am I being hacked?

You will need to determine whether your network is secure, but *nobody is "hacking" your iSight*.

Check for forgotten items someone who has physical access to your Mac may have added:



 • camera-capable System Preferences.... > Accounts > Login Items,



 • camera-capable widgets, and



 • camera-capable applications open in the Dock.

If you don't have any of the above and have not installed, activated, and authorized Apple Remote Desktop or some other software specifically designed to allow remote operation of your Mac, you can be confident that your webcam is not being used without your permission.



If you still see the green light occasionally, consider the reset suggested in

  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2090

You might also want to test another user account to see if the unexplained green light is user account specific.

EZ Jim



Mac Pro Quad Core (Early 2009) 2.93Ghz w/Mac OS X (10.6.4)  MacBook Pro (13 inch, Mid 2009) 2.26GHz (10.6.4)
LED Cinema Display  G4 PowerBook 1.67GHz (10.4.11)  iBookSE 366MHz (10.3.9)  External iSight

Hi,

Adding a specific example to EZ Jim's comments.

A web browser can access Video Chat sites
This is one http://www.mebeam.com/index.php

In this case you type in a "room name" and a page is created just for you (and anybody you send the URL to).
On this site the Flash pop appears automatically asking for your permission to access the camera (Flash has to be enabled in your Browser first)

Once you have allowed this your video will appear on the page (You may have also to select the "right" camera type in the Camera icon).

Having done all this - if you use tabs and go to another tab your camera is still active on the tab the Video is showing on. (Same for separate windows)

Example of a Camera Able Widget http://mac-free.com/download/Mirror-widget.html

Hope this helps.



9:03 PM Wednesday; August 4, 2010

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

Message was edited by: Ralph Johns (UK)

Added Camera Able Widget link