Posted March 02, 2019 05:13:31 The internet is buzzing about the strange phenomenon of ‘webcams’ that appear to capture an individual’s web-cam image from a distance.
The photos are being shared around the web and have been captured in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, according to news.com, an Australian online news service.
“It’s a bit of a weird phenomenon,” says Andrew Williams, an assistant professor of media at Queensland University.
“We don’t really understand the source of the images.
It’s like something out of a nightmare or a science fiction novel.”
You know, they are not quite human-like, they’re not quite recognisable and they are just strange.
“He says there’s no evidence they’re real.”
There’s nothing about it that we’ve seen that would suggest it’s not real,” he says.”
They look very, very different to us, but they are.
“Williams says the photos are so different to the ones we see of real people that they’ve had to be recreated in software.”
I’ve never seen anything like this, I’ve never heard of anything like it,” he said.”
The difference between a human and a webcam is like an iPhone 5 or an iPad 3.
It just doesn’t look right.
“Williams and his team say it is possible to capture a human’s image from above, but only with a camera that has been fitted with a low-power microphone.”
This webcam does have a microphone, and it’s attached to a piece of equipment called a micrometer,” he explains.”
So it’s got the microphone attached to it, and then you can get a very good view of the image.
“The team says they have already received hundreds of reports from people who say they’ve seen strange webcammers trying to steal their webcam images.”
People are saying, ‘Well I can’t believe I’ve got my webcam captured on this webcam,'” he says.”
“People think they’re taking photographs of their own people.
They’ve got people in the background, they’ve got someone else in the foreground.”
And there’s people behind it, they have the microphone.
And then it’s gone.
“Williams suggests the reason people report being taken to the beach is that they believe the images are of their friends.”
A lot of people are going to be on their way to the beaches with friends and they want to have a look at them and see if they are their friends,” he explained.”
That’s the main reason that people say they were taken.
“Williams said while he’s not sure who the people behind the webcam are, he’s confident they are the same person who had captured the photos in the first place.”
Maybe it’s a person from a social media site, maybe it’s somebody who has had the webcam on their phone,” he laughed.”
But they’re clearly using a low powered micrometers to capture it.
“Williams also said there was no evidence that the people involved have uploaded the photos online, or that anyone had been able to recover the images from the webcam.”
Obviously there is nothing in the public domain that says that’s the case, but there’s nothing that we know of that would indicate that it’s true,” he told news.au.