I would say you are equally likely to catch someone jacking off through the webcam as to catch valuable information through the microphone. They are therefore equally lucrative
How could it be equally lucrative? The amount of information someone can gather from a camera is much smaller than what you could gather from a microphone in a given room.
If I am in a conference room talking about strategy, an uncovered camera will just pick me up. The microphone will capture everyone’s conversation.
Depends on your tolerance for shaming. I, for one, would probably be a bit pissed off if someone threaten to publish video of me jerking off, but wouldn't care about that enough to pay anyone any money. Listening to a secret conversations in conference room on the other hand, than can be valuable on it's own, no need to blackmail.
Honestly, unless you're cheating on your SO, society is growing increasingly tolerant/indifferent of most of the other things you could see on a webcam
Honestly. I could care less what society thinks. But the scenario where one would have their laptop open and awake in their bedroom while cheating on their spouse and have enough money to make blackmail worthwhile and trust the information won’t get out anyway is slim.
How many people are doing something that is worth the time to blackmail in front of a camera and have the means to pay a substantial sum of money compared to the value of corporate secrets?
Also what are the chances that a microphone wouldn’t overhear something incriminating even if the camera were covered in your bedroom?
And I am really not trying to go down the road of wondering if you are doing something incriminating in your bedroom and your partner is being completely silent what that implies.....
Corporate espionage is potentially more lucrative yes but the opportunities are much less. There are millions of MacBooks out there with significantly more people jacking off in front of them than discussing lucrative corporate secrets
I'm not sure real "jerking face" blackmail is that frequent. If caught the author would face heavy charges. It's probably way easier and less risky to massively scam by pretending you had access to the webcam than to actually bother to hack.
Beside I'm not sure a "jerking face" would be more than awkward if published. A reverse angle in which you could identify what was the video used for the jerking session would be way more compromising.
And in this regard poorly protected IOT surveillance cameras have way more evil potential that webcam in my opinion.
