Secure Your Privacy by Installing A Lens Lid (Lens Cover) on Your Web Camera : eMeet C960
Since teleworking has been continuing these days, I bought a new web camera eMeet C960 at Amazon Japan on the other day. This web camera itself has already so many good reviews on Amazon marketplace (Amazon Japan) and because it was reasonably priced (around 3,000 yen), I bought it immediately without any slight hesitation.
Shortly after this purchase, however, I realized that while this camera has indeed pretty good quality and performance, it actually has a weakness that it doesn't have a lid installed to cover its lens. Thus, it is somehow it brought a risk such of violating privacy in case there is unauthorized access by hackers, for example. As in recent years privacy protection has become more important than ever, this issue made me feel worried. So, I started browsing on the internet for a inexpensive lens lid that can fit to cover the eMeet C960 web camera's lens.
Some hours later, it turns out that it was not so easy to find a suitable lid with only very little information such as the web camera model. That was when I decided to measure the actual dimension of the lens of the camera to narrow my search of the lid.
I found that a lens cover with a diameter of 19 mm to 21 mm or a diameter of 23 mm or more seems good. However, because I found that there are almost no types with a diameter of 23 mm or more on the market, I narrowed my search to lens lid whose diameter is about 20 mm.
When I checked on Amazon Japan, Mercari, Rakuten Ichiba, etc., although there were some promising candidates, I was actually surprised that I almost could not find any products that priced less than 1,000 yen. That was until finally I found and decided to buy the product below, which is a set of "two different sizes of camera lens lids", which was sold at Yahoo Shopping website. Its price was less than 500 yen including the shipping cost, which is very reasonable. Also, since it was a set of two different size of lids, I personally feel that it would be less risk of failure on this purchase.
- Lens lid 1 (1pc) size: 27x22.5mm (hole diameter 19mm)
- Lens lid 2 (1pc) size: 29x28mm (hole diameter 20mm)
The adhesive of this lens lid is good in quality because it uses adhesive tape 200MP which is made by 3M, a major brand of good quality adhesive tapes.
After comparing and examining the adhesive area and its expected appearance after installation, I finally decided to attach the small one (hole diameter:19 mm) to my web camera.
After the lens lid was attached to my web camera, I checked and learned that the camera actually cannot go completely "black" even when the lens lid is being closed. Nevertheless, generally I am satisfied because it can fulfill its purpose of hiding the field of view effectively when the web camera is not being used, thus securing the privacy.
Needless to say, privacy protection is very important when we browse the Internet these days. If you have a web camera at your home or your office that does not have a lens lid to cover it when you are not using it, I strongly suggest you to consider installation a lens lid like this to secure your privacy at all time.
