To her surprise the room was a lot fuller than she had expected. Not one to miss out on an opportunity, especially when she was footing the bill, Tracy Ireland had arranged for members of her staff and all her models to attend, not just those who had been on the receiving end of the recent spate of attacks. It was more than the size and nature of the audience she would be presenting to that ratcheted up Spence’s already considerable apprehension, for she found herself subjected to the appraising stares of forty tall, skinny girls, any one of whom could easily have graced the cover of a high-end fashion magazine. They were the kind of girls who had always put Spence’s teeth on edge whilst lording around high school in their little cheerleading cliques and looking down their noses at girls like her or anyone else who thought a brain was actually useful for something other than coming up with new and clever ways of attracting the attention of the school jocks.
Ignoring the way the gathered covey of young women took to whispering amongst themselves or snickering after casting a quick, appraising glance over her, Spence made her way to the front of the room where she fired up her laptop and connected it to the projector. Even when a plain black background appeared on the room’s front wall, the models continued to chatter.
Well, Spence told herself as she paused a moment to survey her audience, it may not be the same girls she’d had to put up with throughout high school, but the revenge could still be sweet. With that, she made a show of loudly slapping a crisp new fifty-pound note on the desk in full view. “I bet fifty quid that I can guess the passwords and bankcard PINs of at least a third of you here.”
The whispering and snickering came to an abrupt stop as Spence took stock of her audience, realizing, rather cattily, she had in all likelihood been lowballing that estimate. “To prove my point, I’ve already listed them on this slide,” she continued once she was satisfied she had their full attention. “Any takers on that bet?”
Her eyes once more swept the room. “No? Then let’s do the PINs first, shall we?” Spence smiled as she advanced her presentation, a new PIN appearing every couple of seconds whilst at the same time she kept her eyes glued on the audience. Within ten seconds she was struggling to keep a triumphant grin off her face.
“Let’s move on to passwords,” she announced with a confidence that was growing with each passing minute. Again, as she flashed a succession of common words, numbers, and combinations people tended to use as passwords, she watched her audience with a degree of satisfaction as half the models were now sporting expressions that betrayed the acute discomfort they felt about what they were seeing. “I’ll even bet that a number of you have life passwords,” Spence ventured as she paused at the end of this unconventional, but highly effective introduction to her class on cybersecurity as she waited for the inevitable question she knew was coming.
She did not have long to wait until a hand rose ever so tentatively from near the back of the room. “What’s a life password?” a raven-haired girl with almond-shaped eyes asked.
“A life password is one a person uses for every site and every account they have. It’s called a life password because if it gets lost or compromised, your life is stuffed.” By now Spence had their undivided attention.
The next hand that appeared caused Spence to feel a little sorry, for the girl couldn’t have been more than fifteen. “What can we do about it?” she asked plaintively.
“That’s why we are here,” Spence stated in a voice that was noticeably less strident than the one she’d been using up to this point as she smiled reassuringly at the girl. “Let’s start with passwords.” With that, Spence settled down into a no-nonsense tone that would have brought a smile to Andy’s face.
“Treat your passwords like your lingerie,” she advised, pausing a moment to allow the titters to die down. “Never share them, choose a different one for every occasion, make them memorable and unusual, and keep them hidden, though I expect that doesn’t work if you’re actually modeling lingerie,” she added before allowing a moment for the laughter to die down. “Other than that one exception, I expect you know what I mean. And,” she pointed out, raising her pitch a tad for effect, “just as important, change them regularly.”
Another hand went up. This time it belonged to an older girl near the front with a sulky mouth and a bored expression. “Isn’t this all a bit paranoid? I mean, like, who’s got time to do all this?”
Spence kept her smile in place as she answered. “It’s only paranoid if you haven’t any enemies in the world, or people who are eager to make your acquaintance that are not the sort you fancy, people like this.” With that, she returned to her presentation, running a video of recent news clips that involved cases of identity theft, cyberstalking, trolls, and cyberbullying ending with the recounting of a tragic case in which a teenage girl, probably only a year or two younger than most of her audience, committed suicide as a result of the abuse she had received online.
When it ended, Spence didn’t wait for any more questions, going straight on to the attack. “How many of you get hit on by creeps out there in the real world?” she snapped. In response, most of the older models nodded as their hands shot up. “How many of you have either done, or thought about doing, a women’s self-defense class?” Again, a fair number showed their hands. “If there are creeps sliming around you in real life, you can rest assured they’re going to do the same online! This course is no different than the ones I imagine a fair number of you have taken to protect yourself out there on the street,” Spence declared crisply, pausing until she was sure she had their undivided attention. “It is a course on cyber self-defense.”
For the rest of the day Spence talked herself hoarse, responding to a barrage of questions along the way, put forth by an audience that was notably more eager and engaged than it had been when she had first walked in. She showed them how to secure their accounts on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Ask.fm, or any of a host of other social networking sites. By the time this initial session was nearing an end, most of the girls were sporting worried expressions that told Spence she’d made her point.
The only exception to this generalization was a rather striking blonde who was sitting at the front. Throughout the session Spence had noticed she’d simply nodded encouragingly or smiled quietly to herself when one of the other girls asked a foolish question. This was especially true when Spence was talking about phishing, spam, and how to go about not exposing sensitive information to the world. It quickly became clear to her that the blonde, unlike her peers, was ahead of the game, for she never once flinched or averted her eyes in embarrassment whenever Spence mentioned something that struck close to home.
The questions were still coming when Tracy Ireland slipped into the back of the room and gestured to Spence that it was time to start wrapping up.
Doing her best to hide a sigh of relief, Spence raised a hand. “I imagine I’ve given you all a great deal to think about,” she concluded when the room had settled. “For those of you who still have questions, I ask that you write them down and save them. I’ll be here every day until you leave for Milan. If you have any questions that simply cannot wait, or need some one-on-one help with anything I’ve covered, you have my e-mail or can reach me through Ms. Ireland’s receptionist.”