Defense Against the Dark Arts: Securing Your Digital Footprint

A 60-minute tutorial on not getting scammed, hacked, or defrauded online.

Most people aren’t hacked by geniuses. They’re hacked by opportunists running a numbers game — and the goal of good digital hygiene isn’t to be unhackable, it’s to be a harder target than the next person. In this hands-on session, we’ll walk through how attackers actually think, why your email is the crown jewel most people leave unlocked, and the handful of habits that filter out 95% of real-world threats.

What we’ll cover: • How attackers think — the economics of scams and hacks, and why understanding them makes the defenses feel obvious instead of arbitrary • Locking down your email — the one account that controls all the others, and how to protect it accordingly • Password managers, done right — live demo, common objections, and why your brain is the wrong tool for the job • Two-factor authentication, ranked — from hardware keys and passkeys down to SMS, and why the difference matters • The human layer in the AI era — voice cloning, deepfake calls, LLM-powered phishing, and the practical defenses that still work (hint: family safe words, callbacks, and slowing down) • The first-hour playbook — what to do if it happens to you anyway

You’ll leave with a new security practice in place and the confidence to navigate an evolving digital landscape — not as a paranoid, but as someone who knows how the game is played. Bring: a laptop or phone if you want to set things up live as we go. No technical background required.