Mitnick deserves much respect for what he can accomplish and can be reviled for his brazen break ins. He claims no damages for the chaos he would wreak upon his marks. He does get what he deserved.

Great book. Great narration.

This book started of strong with an interesting glimpse into a lifestyle I knew nothing about. Very interesting guy with an exciting tale but got repetitive for me about halfway through. If you read half the book you'll be happy you did...the whole thing then no guarantees.

The story and the way if was told kept me listening. It was quite an adventure and made me often laugh, This book reflects a bygone culture. I think if any egghead young person gets restless enough to be driven to crack codes nowadays, they'll likely turn to a computer game. The pondering and curiosity that drove innovative computer freaks back in the day has been muted quite a bit.

No, but he's an excellent reader and I will look for more books performed by him in the future.

Great book, great reading.

One of the best books I've listened to on Audible. The story and was fascinating and Ray Porter was excellent. This would have to be must listen for anyone with any sort of tech interest.

This was a pretty good book. I enjoyed listening to it, but at times the author got a bit technical and i could feel my eyes glassing over. The narration was decent, the story line was good. I was surprised by how many things the author was able to do in his life, and how little trouble he actually got in to, all things considered.

Great topic, very interesting subject matter.

Great flow, narrative was excellent.

Very good reader, ive only listened to about a dozen or so audio books so i dont have alot of experience with alot of readers.

How to Tick Off the Phone Company

Very cool story, one of the most compelling and exciting biographies I have ever read or heard! I've read biographies of Harry Houdini and Julius Caesar to Charles Barkley and Larry Bird and this one ranks right at the top.

Kevin Mitnick presents himself as a hacker addict who was only doing black hat for the challenge. He goes into great detail about all the ways he duped and betrayed people, but only just for the challenge. He waxes appreciatively of the people who helped him while under the pretense that he was a fellow worker, or an authority figure. He seems quite indignant that law enforcement wanted to throw the book at him despite his repeated opportunities to put on a white hat. Now he is making the big bucks on this book, speaking engagements and consulting. Not much of any real excitement in the book but lots of details about how clever he was and is. I am not a hacker, but I have worked as a programmer and find it nice to create things. Mitnick enjoys penetrating other people's creations, and that is all well and good, but I don't see the point in reading a book about it. Now that I have done, all that's left for me to do is to write this silly review.

I found this book totally fascinating. If you are under the age of 40 a lot of the things mentioned in this book, like rotary phones, brief case cell phones & pagers, maybe foreign to you. However it is an amazing story of one of the first hackers, Kevin Mitnick.

Kevin starts as a teenager, messing with the speaker at a local drive through by saying wild things to the customers. From there he progresses to what was then called Phone Freaking, using social engineering to get the information he wanted to get the information. It's all a huge game to him, just how far can he get before someone says "hey, wait minute...".

Mitnick spend over 30 years social engineering his way to hack into some of the largest companies in the US. Never doing anything malicious, just having fun to see if he can. He also spends 30 years running from the FBI until he is finally caught.

If you are even a little bit of a geek, you'll enjoy this book.

I thought the story was interesting, however the delivery was appalling. Too make it higher star rating the protagonist needed to learn something. He needed to learn a life lesson which was just in his reach but never quite got there. I found his explainations galling and flat!

No!

He's obviously able to read well

The reflections on how far technology has come is interesting. Social manipulation which has more to do with being a sociopath than computer whizz was interesting but over explained.

I really detested the authors lack of insight into his behaviour and his ability to redeem himself as a nice guy. He couldn't even be trusted to make a phone call. Stealing is stealing!