The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy: Practical Tips for Staying Safe Online

Concise, intelligent, thoughtful guide to protecting yourself online. Indispensable for women and girls -- and most likely for anyone vulnerable to online harassment or bigotry or just protective of their privacy.I was shocked to find out how much information I was giving away just by googling -- even without participating in social media. The default settings of so many programs are such that you essentially agree to give away all your privacy, from where you are to what you are thinking about, unless you take steps to control it. And keep checking to make sure that your choices weren't removed on an update. The book gives a lot of tips and links without bogging down in verbiage. The 2015 print version is smartly laid out, with a very useful index.Also worth noting is the author's emphasis on the right and need to participate in online life. My own tendency is to be guarded, having been stalked and socially humiliated online a few years ago. Because of that I will never be as open as I once was. But whatever your comfort level online, this book seems a good way to improve your odds for a good experience as well as to protect your private information.It's a fast and enjoyable read, so you get a grasp on what needs to be done. You can take a few quick steps to make an immediate improvement in your online safety and privacy. Other steps may take longer, but you can do them as you have time.Because my digital files are so mixed up, spread across devices and browsers, the hardest part for me was first to list the steps I needed to take in each area. I spent several days struggling with my new smartphone (a total newbie, I needed to figure it out anyways), and three long days consolidating, updating and protecting my passwords. (Violet Blue's advice about passwords alone was worth the price of the book.) It is tedious to collect and review all this data from different places, but now that I have the data files, properly backed up, I hopefully won't have to do this again, apart from regular updating.I think this book is especially necessary for young people, with marketers capturing their every keystroke like a patient etherized on a table.Get this book!

I intended to skim quickly before passing on as a present, but ended up reading cover to cover and getting my own copy. Lots of good practical and actionable advice. Whilst excellent for those new to thinking about the topic, it also serves as a good reminder to those more well versed in privacy and security: it prompted me to do an audit of my whois records and I found some with real info I thought was private. And certainly not just for girls.

Great author, great guide to privacy! This book is good for anyone looking for advice on maintaining your privacy online and what to do if it is lost. I recommend it to anyone who has the internet.

I'm a minister. Sometimes teens and their parents ask me about online safety. This book deals with the safety questions in a straightforward and actionable way.

While it's a helpful guide for women, it's really a guide to privacy for everyone who uses the Internet. I highly recommend it.

In the beginning I was really excited about this book as I was expecting a little bit of "girl power" mentality, in depth suggestions on end user security and tips on how to ensure your privacy online. I had even bought two digital copies and one physical copy directly from "No Starch Press", my plan was to give away one of the digital copies away to a loved one after I read the book.However I found myself reading the same chapter twice if not three times as I was constantly running into inconsistencies, contradicting suggestions, out of date practices and worst or all suggestions that jeopardize your privacy.Some examples:Violet constantly points out how "creepy" or evil Google and other companies are for selling your data throughout the entire book, however in chapter 9 she suggests using Google Voice to forward communications to and from your personal number... Suggesting that you use Google to send and receive all of your personal SMS, MMS and calls. This suggestion comes as part of hiding yourself from personal creeps and yet you would be turning everything over to the "evil giant(s)" that she speaks so poorly of in most of her chapters.Chapter 9 also contains a suggestion that TOR(The Onion Router) should be used for your daily web activity. This is dangerous advice as TOR utilizes multiple exit nodes to forward your traffic thus making your traffic only private as the data you send through it. Sending credentials through TOR or accessing a personal account while using TOR not only reveals who you are, but also puts your accounts at risk as penetration testing tools such as Responder, SSLStrip+, ettercap, bettercap, MITMF can be ran on a exit node to help strip encryption, spoof authentication servers to steal credentials.Violet likes to make wild claims of making your account "hacker proof" and as a professional penetration tester, digital forensic analyst and senior information security leader I can say that nothing is "hacker proof".There are also tidbits throughout the book stating that there is nothing wrong with sharing "flirty" or "sexy" photos of yourself online, she does not cover on how temporary photo services can be overrode or how the receiving parties might have their accounts hacked or stolen. Considering how this book is aimed at youth she does not realize that she might be encouraging illegal activity. What about disgruntled exes who continue to store media of you and post it to sites you have no idea of, how do you resolve that Mrs. Blue? She then continues to plug her site for what to do about known revenge porn.At one point Violet states that end users should install keyloggers on their computers if they feel that their privacy is being violated, this is an extremely misguided suggestion as most publicly available tools or installers contain more than a keylogger and in fact are a way for some stranger to control your machine remotely which is how nude photos commonly get stolen to begin with... next to revenge porn.She even tries to state that Apple products are more secure than Windows (they're both vulnerable) which is something you only hear from a misinformed parent or a entry level Help Desk grunt.Finally there are claims that the company you work for can not view your social media or personal content, I can confidently state that most companies can. Every company that I have been with has an Acceptable Use Policy or Privacy Agreement that every employee signs before being hired stating that you the company asset is on the company's network while using the company's computer so any traffic you send or receive is subject to inspection. All next generation firewalls also have the capability to decrypt encrypted traffic as malware is now commonly sent through encrypted connections as a way to bypass modern intrusion prevention systems... Meaning your encrypted data is not so safe after all. Overall I really tried to like this book, instead I found myself angry at her constant attempts to sound like a security professional, lack of how to use said suggested tools, recommendations to use software plagued with vulnerabilities and the constant claims of how women are much more vulnerable than men online and how sexist the internet, social media sites are their creators are.

BUT I AM ENJOYING READING IT TOO.VERY INSIGHTFUL. PLENTY OF USEFUL INFORMATION AND TIPS .GLAD I BOUGHT IT .RECOMMENDED.