It is well known hackers, the NSA, CIA and other groups have created malware to secretly turn on your webcam and microphone on your phone, tv etc.. But fortunately on our computers and laptops we have some options.
Most webcams use the "uvcvideo" kernel module / driver. You can disable this in two ways on boot. I recommend both just as a failsafe.
Disable it on rc.local once your system boots automatically
Add the followi........
SSH Public Key Authentication (Login Without Passwords)I've gone over this before but just a quick note!
the "authorized_keys" file in ~/.ssh
must be chmodded to "600" or public key authentication won't work.
I guess it's kind of a security/failsafe feature that I've
seen on all Linux and Unix OS's........