How can I make sure the built in webcam on my Window’s 7 machine is turned off? I could not find where it was in the control panels. And if I do have it off can someone get into my secured wireless network and turn it on?
Thanks
Unless someone has full control over your computer, they can’t use your webcam. The webcam is never really “on” or “off”. Software running on the computer can ask the webcam for an image or video stream. Nothing is happening when no software is talking to the camera. Other people on your network can’t remotely activate your web cam and look at pictures from it.
If you want to treat the computer like it doesn’t have a webcam at all, then open Device Manager and disable the driver for the webcam.
Agreed, the closest thing to your web-cam a web browser has can use to control it is Adobe Flash (which supports streaming a web-cam’s contents or displaying it on the web), however even this strictly requires giving permissions on a site by site basis. The only way someone can hijack your web-cam is if you allow them access to your machine to directly affect the permissions. Don’t worry about it, your perfectly safe! 
Put ducktape over the lens…?
No more worries! 
[ot]duct tape
And if you’re going to tape over the lens, use electrical tape. Duct tape will leave residue that’s hard to remove without damaging the lens/case.[/ot]
I find it OK running web cam in my laptop with Window7. I have good experience with winow7 web cam.
Or a post-it-note or hey…how about turning it around or unplugging it for the uber paranoid here? 
Navigate to My Computer > Properties > Hardware > Device Manager > search for your Webcam, when find, right click on it and Disable it. Hopefully, you will get solution of your problem.