I’m sure many of you have seen people with stickers over their webcams and wondered why (probably writing that person off as paranoid). But it’s well known in tech circles that a camera in a computer or smartphone can be turned on remotely by an attacker with the resources, time, and motivation.
Security is hard, and our defences are weak. The capability of an adversary to attack your devices doesn’t necessarily hinge upon a consumer choice of which computer or phone you own. Nor is it likely to matter that you think nobody is interested in you. Put another way, their reach is limited only by the tools they may have at their disposal, their motivations and, in some cases, the law.