Network Security

Today morning I encounter a strange fact that if you have internet connection at your home with web cam installed in your computer, a person sitting at the any corner of the world can switch on your web cam, can edit any data of your computer, can change hardware configuration of your PC.
Obviously one will think, How? The answer is whenever you use a browser and open a new site the IP address of your computer(which is like your telephone no) get registered in the database of that particular site. Whatever mail you exchange is stored somewhere. this way one can see your personal conversation. Not even mails, if you chat using Google talk, etc. your audio conversation is also get stored in the database.
The point is that one need to learn to use internet cautiously. How you can prevent someone to access your IP address? The answer is use Proxy Server which is free ware, you can easily download from internet.
In the September 11, attack Al Quaida exchanged information encrypted in a photograph. Isn't it amazing that you can hide your text behind an image? In 2001, they were aware of this technology but the US govt not.
Moral of the story is crackers are always 2-3 step ahead of hackers. It is our responsibility to prevent cyber crime and hence we need to be a good hacker..............so lets learn more about computer security.