Concern over webcam peeping toms

The news about the school who used webcams to spy on students at home is all over the web today. One interesting bit of information mentioned on FNC this morning is that the green light did NOT activate on the web cam when the IT people were viewing the students. Doing a bit of Google investigation today, wondering about the software that allows others to turn on your webcam. Go here to watch a video of a woman who had this happen with her Dell.
Here is an article about someone installing this software on a customer's computer.

Garcia then took her machine to another computer expert—a trusted friend this time—who discovered that Feigin had installed two pieces of software onto her machine: Log Me In and Web Cam Spy Hacker. Web Cam Spy Hacker may have been written by Feigin himself (the address on the site was the same as his home address), and it allowed him to upload the various photos taken on the machine to a remote server. Unfortunately for Garcia, that included 20,000 photos of her, her friends, and her boyfriend. Since the laptop mostly resided in her bedroom, some of them were taken while she was not clothed.

Another article here about Trojan horses that allow this:

According to Graham Cluely, senior technology consultant at Internet security company Sophos, “It’s remarkably simple to spy on another computer user, read their emails, watch which websites they visit, and even take pictures of them in front of their computer - if they have not taken the necessary precautions. We have seen a dramatic growth in Trojan horses which allow hackers to spy in this way.” 

An article over at Slate:

So how do you prevent someone from spying on you? The usual Internet hygiene applies. Don't click the weird attachment your computer-illiterate relatives send you, update your antivirus software regularly, and so forth. If you want to be really cautious, the best solution is the simplest: Put a piece of tape over the camera. It may be the laptop equivalent of the tinfoil hat, but it's the only way to absolutely guarantee privacy. The microphone is trickier, since you can't tape it up. You can disable it, though, by plugging a converter or some other cord into the computer's microphone jack, which turns off the internal mic.