I'm a little worried about webcam access in browsers at least as currently implemented (and native apps I suppose but less so) As it is, in Chrome, if you let

I'm a little worried about webcam access in browsers at least as currently implemented (and native apps I suppose but less so) As it is, in Chrome, if you let a webpage access your camera (or mic) that page gets permanent permission to access the camera whenever it wants forever, no questions asked again. I recently visited one of the early HTML5 Webcam demos that I hadn't visited in over two years. I expected to get asked for permission to access the camera. Instead the camera just came on. That is NOT a good model for web sites that are covered in ads and scripts from all over the net. I'm sure Google was thinking of supporting hangouts when designing webcam support and for the most part I agree that if hangouts always had access to the camera that might be no worse than a native app. But, it's the browser it's not a native app, it's untrusted code. Even for communications sites though if I run them in an iframe they get camera permission. In other words, say yes just once and now that domain can follow you all over the net and use your camera, at least as of Chrome 59. I don't know what the best permission UX is. Always asking seems lame for actual communication websites (messenger, hangouts, slack?, ...) but not asking sucks for the open web. It even sucks on a communications website if the camera feature is not something I use often. I don't want any app to have permission to spy on me. I personally want to opt-in to always ask. I'd prefer this even in native apps but especially for the web. https://greggman.github.io/doodles/html5-webcam-iframe.html https://greggman.github.io/doodles/html5-webcam-iframe.html PS: I filed a bug on this about 5 months ago but no word https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=687834 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=687834