The Wall Street Journal ran a good article concerning home surveillance cameras and how to secure them from hackers, or at least harden them against hacking (here, too, security is an arms race, and no particular security technique is either proof or permanent).

There are other cameras besides home surveillance cameras that are vulnerable, though; the camera built into laptops, for instance.

In addition to the strong password for the AP or Ethernet router through which the laptop connects to the Internet, it’s necessary to use a strong password for login access to the laptop (and encrypting the hard drive). On top of that, I put tape over the camera lens except for those rare occasions when I actually use it. My laptop also has a light on its microphone key that tells me when the microphone is muted; I monitor that.

And: in addition to keeping the AP/Ethernet router software and firmware current, it’s necessary to do the same with the laptop.

The only password manager I use is pen and paper, kept secure. That way, there’s no cloud hack that can get to them, and if my laptop were hacked or stolen, there’d still be no access to my passwords.