What the screen grab doesn’t reveal is that Sylvia joined my Zoom room at 2:10 a.m. local time, slipping through unseen doors while I slept. I hadn’t summoned her to that meeting, my calendar bore no trace, nor do I know Sylvia.
Perhaps you’ve had similar messages and, as I did, promptly undertook a hurried search of online wisdom into “unknown entries into Zoom room”. The consensus seems to be that it’s random “doorknob rattling” to see which room will open, along with the usual advice to use a waiting room or a passcode. Zoom pretty much forces users to do one or the other or both so no need to rush off to check your fortifications just yet.
Chances are, Sylvia is a phantom bot, eternally rattling doorknobs around the globe, across time zones, all days and all nights.
But then again, what if she’s real?
Sylvia lives in Nairobi. Sylvia is not her real name but rather the assigned name for her online worker persona. She makes paltry money for the hours she puts in, but she is supporting herself and two children on what little she can make without benefit of any higher education, training, or entrepreneurial opportunities. She trawls the internet while her children are in school, or after they’ve gone to bed. It’s joyless work, no question, but it gives her the freedom to be at home, with her children. She has no idea what her doorknob rattling is intended to achieve but hopes it’s data only, and not part of a larger scam. At the same time, she knows in her heart of hearts that whatever it is, it’s not legit. It’s guilt-inducing and soul-sucking, but there are no viable alternatives that come to her mind.
Or…
Sylvia lives in Marseilles. She is afraid to go out at night because the city feels unstable, threatening, unpredictable. She lives alone and wishes she didn’t. She spends many hours online, reading, watching videos, studying tutorials, curating digital wardrobes she believes would suit her, should she ever venture out. She has discovered that she can slip strings of random 11-digits into Zoom meetings and occasionally be admitted. She lives for these encounters with individual strangers but even more so with the groups whose discussions she joins anonymously, soaking up their conversation until someone notices and questions her presence. That’s when she immediately powers off her computer and goes to the window, checking to see who is at home in the windows across the street.
Or…
Sylvia is nowhere and everywhere, a phantom whose location cannot be traced. He is a master of the invisible, a highly proficient hacker who knows to bounce himself and his activities amongst multiple server farms in countless locations. That’s possibly his favourite part of the work. Sure, the payoffs from getting into your bank accounts through your meeting platform’s back door is satisfying, financially, but it doesn’t match the thrill of making tracks through fresh cloud snow, then brushing over them with a virtual cedar bough. To have presence without leaving a trace; to be in the world but not of it. He’s not even lonely because he has a boisterous group of friends who rely on him to pick up the tab. They provide cover, allowing himself to claim some role in society. They think he’s a day trader.
From 1982, Alan Parsons Project with “Eye in the Sky”. Here’s looking at you, kid.
Until next time, keep the doors locked at night.
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