As people continue to hunker at home and move business and personal interactions online, video calling has emerged as the perfect way of keeping in touch. However, video calls have come with certain challenges, and looking good during these virtual meetings tops the list. So, how do you make sure…

A couple of weeks ago we talked about the concerns that many had that the new Microsoft Xbox One had built-in spying capabilities, especially as it needed to be connected to the Internet at least 1 hour a day. In fact with the leaks about the NSA PRISM program some were even wondering whether the new Xbox One would have an ‘NSA Spycam’ (in fact we had someone searching for that on our site).

It is one of the sleaziest, creepiest uses for a webcam and the Internet: spying on your room mate while they are having a close encounter of the intimate kind, and broadcasting the fact on Twitter and sharing it through iChat. But it is not a hate crime, even when you announce that you “saw him making out with a dude.” That is the finding of New Jersey Judge Glenn Berman, in sentencing Dharun Ravi to 30 days in jail following Ravi’s actions, and the subsequent suicide of his roommate Tyler Clementi.

The court in the case of the Lower Merion School District in Pennyslvania that was spying on its students – in their homes – via webcams and software installed in the students’ school-provided laptops – has been ordered to let the students see the photos that the school surreptitiously took of them. As it turns out, the photo of Blake Robbins was just the tip of the iceberg; according to reports, there are nearly 58,000 photos taken by the school district, all by remotely accessing the webcam in the students’ laptops while spying on their students in the students homes and in other places off the school premises.

One of the burning questions of the entire “school spying on a student in his own home through the webcam in the school-provided laptop” fiasco – which was followed closely by the “school accuses student Blake Robbins of improper behavior in his own home based on photos taken through the webcam” debacle – is just what was the improper behavior with which they confronted Blake? Read on… (Hint: It has to do with his friends, Mike and Ikes. Yes, it’s true.) P.S. Folks in the area are already calling this “WebCamGate”.

The Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania is being sued by Holly and Michael Robbins, along with their son Blake Robbins, over the discovery that the school district was spying on their son via the webcam in the school-issued laptop which their son received from the school district. The Robbins and others discovered that school administrators were remotely accessing the webcams in the students’ laptops when a student was disciplined by the school for “improper behaviour in this home”, with the school’s assistant principal producing as evidence a photo taken with the webcam, of a scene in the student’s home!

A woman in Germany has saved the life of a man who was a complete stranger to her, using only her webcam and a telephone. According to authorities, the man, who was admiring the sunset near St. Peter-Ording off the German – Danish border, and who had wandered out onto the ice of the frozen North Sea, would surely have died had the woman not just happened to be watching the same sunset – only from 350 miles away, via webcam.

Abraham K. Biggs, known as Candy Junkie on the BodyBuilding .com forums that he frequented, had threatened to commit suicide many times. However, last week, he really meant it. And so it was that Abraham Biggs downed an overdose of anti-depressent medications, and hundreds of people watched his webcam while he died.