Video calls help us see people who are usually at a great distance from us, but separate from the images they see, the cameras can record much more information. According to some computer security researchers, a web camera placed near the monitor of a computer or laptop can tell a hacker exactly what we see on the screen.
The researchers discovered that through web cameras a sound can be recorded that is almost impossible to hear by the human ear, but which is emitted by the LCD screen while updating the images. Webcam microphones can pick up these sounds and transmit them to hackers, who can figure out what we're looking at on the screen while making video calls.
How Hackers Spy on You Through Web Cameras During Video Calls
Synesthesia is name method by which people can be spied on while making video calls, and webcam microphones are not the only ones that can do this. A smartphone, a smart speaker, or even a cheap USB microphone can do the same thing, and using artificial intelligence everything we see on the computer screen can be revealed.
"Security researchers have demonstrated a way to find out what's being displayed on another person's screen during a video call using only the audio from their webcam. The method, named Synesthesia, uses 'coil whine' – a barely audible sound emitted by an LCD monitor as it's refreshed."
The artificial intelligence created by the researchers who discovered Synesthesia managed to identify with an accuracy of 96.4% the 10 most popular websites in the world. A better trained system can also determine which passwords we enter in one website or another, so we are talking about a very advanced spying system, which no one knows about anymore.
