Anyone who is not worried about personal privacy on the Internet should read this book, as it makes painfully clear how easy our privacy is compromised by various players. Likewise, those who think they are aware of this already should read this book because chances are close to 100 percent that they don’t know in just how many ways their privacy is being breached. Privacy might be dead, but that doesn’t take away the need to protect oneself to the best extent possible.

The book starts with a brief overview of key concepts such as privacy and anonymity, and provides a high-level description of privacy laws. Also, key parties who are interested in personal data are introduced, such as intelligence agencies and online advertising companies.

The authors then move on, detailing various risks and countermeasures. This ranges from the obvious advice to select strong passwords using password-generation tools to more advanced options such as using the Tails operating system, which can be run from a universal serial bus (USB) and relies on the Tor network to access the Internet.

The book describes in depth the possible security measures and settings available within the Windows operating system that will make accessing the Internet not necessarily more pleasant, but at least more secure than before. The current state of technology means that protecting one’s privacy comes at the expense of functionality and ease of use. One would wish this to be different someday.

The authors discuss in the last chapter the tradeoff between privacy and surveillance. After every large-scale terrorist attack, most of the population asks their respective governments to do more to prevent the next attack. Thus, governments respond by increasing Internet surveillance, which in turn might reduce the privacy of individuals. Tough choices have to be made, and while the authors sympathize with the need for surveillance, their book will help those same individuals to be less visible.

Reading through this book, a sense of helplessness is hard to avoid. There are so many ways to be spied upon, as there are so many ways to secure oneself against privacy breaches. Diligent readers who want to implement all suggestions will need to allow themselves the necessary time to do so.

Not all recommendations will be suitable for all users, as some guidelines will be too troublesome for average users to implement. Yet, human rights activists, journalists, and others, who have a legitimate expectation of being monitored by the powers that be, would be well advised to take the suggestions inside this book to heart.

More reviews about this item: Amazon