Follow Me by Kathleen Barber
Dedication TK
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The internet is a weird place, full of unexpected rabbit holes. Follow them at your own risk—you might discover something interesting, or you might find yourself reaching for the eye bleach.
Not long ago, I unwittingly stumbled upon the latter while idly browsing the Legal Advice subreddit. It’s one of my favorite places to kill time online: as a non-practicing lawyer, I enjoy the discussion surrounding the more mundane queries (landlord-tenant disputes, arguments with neighbors over property lines), and as a practicing writer, my curiosity is piqued by the more outrageous tales (discovering gold in the walls of an inherited home, learning a spouse thought long dead is in fact alive). That afternoon, I came across a poster concerned that his boss was accessing employees’ home security cameras.
How outlandish, I thought. This post must be fake. But no one else appeared to have the same reaction and instead casually rendered advice as though it were no more exotic than a speeding ticket. I saw references to another subreddit dedicated to “controllable webcams,” and, intrigued, visited it. There I found post after post sharing links to what appeared to be live footage of restaurants, bars, doggy day cares, and more. I turned to the internet at large, attempting to discern what exactly a “controllable webcam” was, where they were located, and how these internet denizens were discovering them. Could anyone find them? Could I, for instance, find more puppy cams?
But my research took a hard left turn as I stumbled across an article with the chilling headline “Meet the men who spy on women through their webcams.”*
I read in horrified fascination how, with only minimal technological skill, someone could secretly install a remote administration tool, or RAT, on another person’s computer. The RAT then gives the “ratter” almost complete access to the victim’s computer, including their files, screen, and webcam. Anytime the victim uses their computer, a complete stranger might be, unbeknownst to them, observing their activity—both digital and physical.
I read about how some ratters toy with their victims, playing pranks like opening porn on their screens; some steal website credentials; and some are a bit more invasive, scouring hard drives for compromising photographs or other blackmail material. Far more disturbing, however, were the ratters who collect “slaves”—their name for the women they’ve spied on via webcam. In addition to watching their “slaves” in secret, these ratters gather in forums to share what they’ve observed their oblivious “slaves” doing and posting screenshots of the women. When they’re bored with a “slave,” they might sell or trade it to someone else on the forum, further perpetuating the violation of privacy.
My skin crawled at the idea of a stranger electronically invading my home, rifling through my personal files, and watching me while I thought I was alone. And then for that stranger to be sharing my secrets on a forum filled with like-minded creeps? Horrifying. When I read that many victims involuntarily downloaded the RAT software while torrenting, I relaxed—I never use torrent sites—but I relaxed only slightly. After all, I had recently listened to an episode of the podcast Reply All titled “What Kind of Idiot Gets Phished?”—which made it abundantly clear that idiots are not the only ones getting phished. As that podcast proved, a minimally proficient phisher can quickly and easily gain access to your email—even with two-factor identification enabled—so who knows what else they could do?
I was so deeply unsettled by the thought of an anonymous ratter lurking around my computer me that I did two things: first I covered my laptop’s built-in webcam with a sticker, as Mark Zuckerberg and James Comey both reportedly do, and then I began writing this story.
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* Ars Technica, March 10, 2013, https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/rat-breeders-meet-the-men-who-spy-on-women-through-their-webcams.
PROLOGUE
HIM
Everyone on the internet is a liar. Every last one of us. The difference is the magnitude of our lies. On one end of the spectrum are the scammers, the phishers, the lowlifes trying to convince your grandmother to bail you out of a Thai prison. On the other end are those whose untruths are the smallest, the most inconsequential: those who click a box affirming they’ve read terms and conditions, who click “like” on a cousin’s photograph of her pug-nosed child. In the middle are the rest of us: those who tell slightly bolder lies designed to make ourselves look better. We embellish our job descriptions. We smile in pictures even when our hearts feel shriveled and black. Because what’s the harm in making our mediocre lives look and feel just a little less mediocre?
But the internet can reveal just as much as it can obfuscate.
Take Sabrina, for example. When I was sixteen, she was my whole world, my pocket-sized, red-haired princess. Every thump of my beating heart was an echo of her name. With her small hand in mine, I could do anything. But seven months into our relationship, her family moved across the country to California. Part of me wanted to drink bleach and die, and another part of me was certain Sabrina and I were simply enduring a test to prove our everlasting love and that fifty years later we would laugh about those years apart. The day she left, I found two strands of her strawberry-blonde hair on my pillow, and I placed them in an envelope underneath my pillow for safekeeping.