He has 10.2 million followers on Twitter, opened an Instagram account last year, has met with tech executives, sold his old iPad for a good price, and addressed mankind’s pervasive use of gadgets in his teachings.
You can now add cybersecurity awareness to the range of tech issues Pope Francis has addressed, even if he only inadvertently triggered online chatter about one of the most basic privacy protection techniques in the Internet age.
As The Washington Post reports, a photo of Pope Francis taken in 2015, in which he was signing up for the Catholic Church’s 2016 World Youth Day event on an iPad, appears to show a sticker taped over the tablet’s camera. The Post said it has verified the photo as real.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and FBI Director James Comey have both been known to use this technique, as well as many privacy-aware computers users worldwide, in order to block a potential hacker’s view.