The book was painfully unabridged! Every number, letter, acronym, and phone number were included. It got pretty tedious!

I would. It was still interesting to learn about social engineering.

Yes, but the way the narrator drew out the profanity was tiresome and off putting.

Possibly. Someone narcissistic should play Kevin. Narcissistic and fat, anyway.

An interesting and mostly entertaining story but like some other reviewers I was annoyed by Kevin's massive ego and protestations that he had never harmed anyone or hacked for his own personal gain and that he was unfairly pursued and punished. He conveniently ignores the impact of his deceipt and manipulation on the numerous unsuspecting decent human beings he "socially engineered" by taking advantage of their tendency to trust and help others for his own selfish purposes, or the cost to the various organisations he targeted (let alone the authorities), in terms of loss of data (which he happily admits he shares with other hackers) and of time and resources spent trying to stop him.
Towards the end of his time on the run his description of his various exploits did become very repetitive and I found myself hoping out loud the feds would catch him to avoid yet another description of how clever he was at outwitting another poor innocent to steal some more code for no more reason than the thrill of it.
Having said all that, most of the time I did enjoy this book, and the performance of the narrator was so good that I had to go back and check it wasn't Kevin narrating the story himself. As noted in the headline - anyone who feels sympathetic to Kevin after listening to this (and there are obviously plenty out there) shouldn't be embarrassed to join the throng of Kevin's dupes - this is probably his most successful piece of social engineering yet...

Yes. It was a well-written and well-narrated book.

Not sure.

No.

Adventures of a telephone geek!

I truly enjoyed the experience.

Good suspense at times but as another review said it is very clinical description of his life. He obviously had an addiction to hacking but I was disappointed that there was little self analysis of the wasted opportunities the addiction caused.

Ranks among the best and most unbelievable true stories I've ever read

That this wasn't fiction dreamed up in an authors imagination and that this modern-day criminal is someone you (almost) never want to see get caught - that's what made this such a great read for me!

No.

Without a doubt

A little too much technical explanation from time to time, but is written so that if you want to ignore this stuff, you still won't miss a single beat

I got bored with it and didn't listen to the second half. I'm sure the story is interesting to hackers but I became boged down with all of the technical phone talk and lost interest.

Probably not

The performance was very good. I don't recall listening to his other work.

Not for me

The story is well performed and I enjoyed it. I just felt Mitnick might be glossing over some of his more evil deeds. A good listen for a computer techie

I am not interested in IT but have always been curious about what makes a hacker tick. The book provided pretty good insight into their world. The social engineering concept is creative and at times genius. Unfortunately overall the main character is disappointing and pathetic because he is so very intelligent and wasted his God given talents on hacking.
Everything he does is justified and he expresses no remorse for his continual invasions of privacy. In the end everything is peaches and cream because he has joined the club.

Overall the book did answer but question of who and why but I didn't like the answer and the book had way to many unnecessary numbers and hacker technical stuff. Way too much.

Computer hacker crime

True story. Honestly told. No-harm white-collar From hacker to security crime story.

Good reading. Story convincingly told.

From hacker to security specialist, the story of a computer pioneer

No.

Yes. There was so many stories that I cant remember half of them. Each one more outrageous than the last. I cant wait to read it again. It was almost like a bunch of sort stories in one book.

Catch me if you can, or any kind of police searching for fugitive on the run story.

As this was an autobiography it is really the main character Kevin Mitnick that's the focus. As excited as I was to hear his adventures, I really wasn't cheering for him. He seems like a bit of a sociopath and in some strange way I feel sorry for him. He seems to lack the ability to form close bonds with other human beings of any real substance. He must be quite lonely.

I did. I sometimes put on audiobooks before bed and set them to go to sleep after a chapter. So often I found myself resetting the sleep feature because the stories just kept me wanting more.

One complaint I have with this book (my only complaint really) is that I dont really hear about any social engineering that went wrong. The book always points to people becoming suspicious but that Kevins wit and brilliance managed to con all of these people in to giving up private information and data. I don't doubt that this worked most of the time, but I would have liked the author to humble himself a bit and maybe shine the light on some situations that went bad (other than the ones that obviously got him arrested). There is an awful lot of bravado, however the story is still so good that I would recommend it. Even the parts of the story that become a little slow because of technical jargon were bearable. It is a credit to the amazing narrator who kept me interested throughout.