Cat Coode – Binary Tattoo
You just sent a picture of your dog to your significant other. Or you’re pretty sure you did.
“Did you get it?” you type in after.
“No,” comes the reply. So you send it again.
“Yeah, I didn’t get it,” they say. So you try a third time.
“I still don’t have it,” they repeat.
Ten minutes later, your buddy messages you saying, “Please stop sending me pictures of your dog!”
But wait – why did your friend end up with that photo? You definitely remember selecting the right contact.
This happened to someone Cat Coode knows, and it’s a story she loves telling during her seminars about cybersecurity and how to manage our online identities.
How did it happen? “There was a glitch in the software and all of a sudden it sent that photo to someone totally different in his contacts,” says the founder of Binary Tattoo. It’s stories like this that she shares with students, parents, and professionals to help them understand what personal data they’re putting out there – and where it can end up.
Before Binary Tattoo, Cat worked both in software development and senior management for technology companies. She even considers herself really lucky to be raising her two kids in a fully digital world.
At that time, she figured she knew technology inside and out. But did she really? “I’m a person who writes and architects software programs for digital devices, and I still didn’t know about the terms and conditions that I’ve agreed to and the amount of information I’m sharing,” she says.
That revelation came at a time when Cat was looking to change the flexibility of her hours as well. “I wanted to be more available to my kids,” she says, and starting her own business made perfect sense. “So I’m still working more hours – I’m sure it’d be more than 40 hours – but I work them on my terms.” That includes making time for pick-ups, prepping dinner, and doing homework each afternoon.
At first, she spoke about data safety and privacy at schools. As a former TA and gym instructor, she fell in love with teaching and jumped at the chance to do it again.
“When I used to teach fitness, we had all these premade classes. If a bunch of beginners walked in, I knew how to teach them in a way that worked for them. And if a bunch of advanced people came in, I could make it harder so that they’d get more out of the workout,” she says.
“I always loved making things work for everyone. So that’s why I was like, I can make tech work for people who don’t think they know tech.”
Sometimes that involves explaining complex technology like cryptocurrency and blockchain in plain language, something Cat’s tackled on her blog.
Sometimes it’s about familiarizing people with the app settings in their phone, and what’s behind the terms and conditions users agree to.
Sometimes it means showing how technology isn’t perfect. “Software makes mistakes. And sometimes it’s not the first time you use it, it’s the 255th time, and it’s only when you pick the contact with a ‘C’ followed by a contact with a ‘G,’ and then because of some way it’s stored in the system, it glitches.”
Sometimes it’s showing companies where their cybersecurity threats are coming from. She covers everything from social media policies to newer trends like spear phishing (basically, hackers using the information posted by employees to socially engineer their way into corporate information).
But in all cases, it’s about making people understand something they didn’t know before, and helping them make better decisions about how they share their information.
While schools already teach kids about topics like cyberbullying and how to be respectful to others online, Cat adds a different perspective. “Especially for kids, I can give six scenarios where a picture from my device ended up in the wrong place,” she says.
(One of those stories is the one at the beginning of this article; another, when the three most recent photos off her phone ended up on Facebook without her knowing – including one of her bruised shoulder, something she had no intention of sharing publicly.)
“I’m not going to lecture you on why you should or shouldn’t have a photo on your phone,” she says. “But I need to tell you why they’re going to end up publicly posted, and now you’re going to go home and think about why you have them on your phone.”
Cat has changed many of her own behaviours as a result of what she teaches. “Before I started, I used to post my kids on Facebook. I used to put tons of stuff on Facebook,” she says. Now, she doesn’t post anything about her kids – she wants them to make their own calls around what goes online when they’re old enough – and she’s changed how much she shares about herself, including how her accounts are linked and which apps have permission to which features.
She hopes to have the same impact on others. “What I love is the testimonial with the ‘I thought I knew what I was doing but then you taught me so much more.’ That is what drives me,” she says.
“If I can keep people from making one mistake… that’s my goal.”
Learn more at:
https://www.binarytattoo.com