[PSA] For those using oculus rift and are aware of internet security, please take a look on this tweet.
- Thread starter maxpayne
- Start date
VR is something I look after in any case. Both headset and sensor go back in the box after playtime.
Unfortunately, while not necessarily right by any means, welcome to the 21st century. If people decided to obtain information from us, beliefs that Oculus would be privacy destroying is about as one dimensional as it gets. Almost all our communication/online activity/phone activity etc. could be analysed effectively on demand, and we basically live around various digital cameras.
Yes, open to exploit from the correct malware. But especially at this stage why target a tiny minority of consumers, who are more likely to be strong on security consciousness, when you could target the gazillion laptop webcams out there being used by people that are really interested in that Nigerian prince storing five million pounds in their account for safekeeping?
TL;DR if this is something to be paranoid about, we may as well be paranoid about everything around us.
Unfortunately, while not necessarily right by any means, welcome to the 21st century. If people decided to obtain information from us, beliefs that Oculus would be privacy destroying is about as one dimensional as it gets. Almost all our communication/online activity/phone activity etc. could be analysed effectively on demand, and we basically live around various digital cameras.
Yes, open to exploit from the correct malware. But especially at this stage why target a tiny minority of consumers, who are more likely to be strong on security consciousness, when you could target the gazillion laptop webcams out there being used by people that are really interested in that Nigerian prince storing five million pounds in their account for safekeeping?
TL;DR if this is something to be paranoid about, we may as well be paranoid about everything around us.
Ian Phillips
Volunteer Moderator
I think I might make a 'sensor sock' to put over it. I keep the headset in a cloth anyway as the instructions said not to expose it to sunlight.
Problem is, i know webcam can capture image and I will cover it if necessary.
But not all people know the oculus sensor is a capable camera.
If people are not aware of it, they may just leave it on the desk, pointing at the bed.
And it is an IR camera, it can capture no-matter how dark it is.
People should be aware of this. Even though they can't /won't do anything. Just don't hand in more tool to company/ hacker to invade our privacy
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If anyone's bothered about either their sensors being on or about the headset itself turning on when you don't want it to (for example, if you keep it stored in any kind of dust protection bag or you keep it mounted on some kind of manequin head or bespoke stand, many of which can easily trigger the proximity sensors that will turn the HMD on) then you can effectively switch it off without physically uplugging everything by just stopping the Oculus runtime Windows service. This is called OVRService. I have two desktop shortcuts labelled 'Stop Oculus' and 'Start Oculus'. The targets for these shortcuts (i.e. what you need to type in when creating the shortcut) are 'net stop OVRService' and 'net start OVRService' respectively (without the quotes). You'll also need to edit the Advanced properties of the shortcut and tick 'run as Administrator' for each one.
Edit: you might also want to change the properties of the service itself so that it doesn't start automatically on a PC reboot (i.e. so you have to use your 'Start Oculus' shortcut as described above to manually start the Oculus software when you want to use it).
Edit: you might also want to change the properties of the service itself so that it doesn't start automatically on a PC reboot (i.e. so you have to use your 'Start Oculus' shortcut as described above to manually start the Oculus software when you want to use it).
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it really doesn't bother me, im not stupid enough to fall for "targeted ads" or other crap all this data gathering goes to
I honestly think that is why Facebook stuck with camera tracking instead of other options.