Melissa wondered why her goof-off sister was IM'ing from the next room instead of just padding over—she wasn't usually that lazy—so she walked over to see what was up. Suzy just shrugged. She had no idea what her sister was talking about. Yeah, the IM had come from her account, but she hadn't sent it. Honest.
That night, Suzy's 20-year-old friend Nila Westwood got the same note, the same attachment. Unlike Melissa, she opened it, expecting, say, a video of some guy stapling his lip to his chin on YouTube. She waited. Nothing. When she called her friend to see what she'd missed, things actually got freaky: Suzy'd never sent a thing. The girls pieced together the clues and agreed: Suzy's AOL account had been hacked. For the next couple of weeks, the girls remained watchful for malware, insidious software capable of wreaking all sorts of havoc. But with no sign of trouble on their machines—no slow performance, no deleted files, no alerts from antivirus programs—they pretty much forgot about it.
A month passed. Suzy, Melissa, and Nila went about their lives online and off. They chatted with friends, posted pictures, and when they were tired, stretched out on their beds to rest. But at some point, each of them looked up and noticed the same strange thing: the tiny light beside their webcam glowing. At first they figured it was some kind of malfunction, but when it happened repeatedly—the light flicking on, then off—the girls felt a chill. One by one, they gazed fearfully into the lenses, wondering if someone was watching and if, perhaps now, they were looking into the eye of something scary after all. Nila, for one, wasn't taking any chances. She peeled off a sticker and stuck it on the lens.
by David Kushner, GQ | Read more:
Photographs by Jason Madara
