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ESET prompted a window that taskhostw.exe wants to access the webcam on my laptop. The exe is from system32. I turned off camera access before but it seems like a system update turned it back on without asking.

Could someone tell me wtf is this? On microsoft forums I read only that this is normal Windows behaviour. But why on earth would windows need to access my webcam if I have no programs installed that would use that (I blocked all camera utilities on the laptop).

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  • I suspect it was caused as Windows update will automatically update your hardware driver to the lastest. So try to disable webcam driver update through Windows update and check if the issue occur again. laptopmag.com/articles/…
    – JoyQiao
    Commented Sep 18, 2018 at 7:47

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Taskhostw.exe is another word by the computer describing task manager: if it's asking for your webcam access, then that w in the name is designed to monitor webcam; it's ensuring it's responding or not, part of task manager, however, not normally used. So yes, it is a normal part of Windows, and the fact that it was re-enabled after an update is surprising, without warning of re-enabling is even worse. After all, Windows is confusing. Good luck!

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  • Thank you for the answer. Well I disabled the webcam from the device manager just to be sure but you know, my antivirus randomly blocking a WINDOWS task to access my webcam is kinda scary :D
    – agiro
    Commented Sep 20, 2018 at 13:08
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    Can you provide any source or reference for this information? I'm not a windows user but that just sounds ridiculous, especially that w at the end part.
    – confetti
    Commented Sep 20, 2018 at 13:55
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    From Google: "Taskhostw.exe is part of the Windows 10 operating system, and starts DLL-based Windows services when the computer boots up.". "TaskHostW stands for Task's Host for Windows". It has nothing to do with webcams at all. Google search also revealed that there's several malwares which use this name to hide itself. If this was really a windows service trying to access your webcam it would sure know how to do so without you getting any prompt at all.
    – confetti
    Commented Sep 20, 2018 at 13:57
  • Came here way later searching for something unrelated in regards to taskhostw.exe - but I have to confirm @confetti's comment and downvote this answer as it is just plain wrong. Taskhostw is a task runner for background tasks and, as the name suggests, "hosts" those "tasks". If it requests webcam access, this can mean two things: a) the task that is executed by taskhost needs access to the webcam or b) it is not the windows taskhostw.exe but any (malware) executable with the same name.
    – Johannes H.
    Commented Jun 11, 2019 at 14:53
  • I don't know why I didn't mention that earlier but malware usually injects itself into other processes (mostly explorer.exe) to hide itself. This is done with a windows process to make sure it is one that's supposed to always run, to disguise better.
    – confetti
    Commented Jun 30, 2019 at 10:34

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