We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency

The narration of this book is just atrocious.

Faking accents in a nonfiction book is unnecessary and the correct pronunciation of words like "Linux" and other terms relating to technology and the internet should be a requirement for narrating books like this.
Especially when you have a book where most of the audience knows the correct wording of phrases and pronunciation of these terms.

So all in all: compelling content let down by irritating narration.

I was blown away by how exciting the author made this story. It's a fascinating look into the underground hacker culture and a wake up call to anyone who hasn't paid much attention to computer security in the past. You'll learn about the basic methods hackers use, including technical hacks and social engineering.

The story was very approachable, Parmy Olson does a good job explaining everything tech related in a fair amount of detail without making the embarrassing mistakes that many journalists make when reporting on technology. (I'm hardly all-knowing in this area, but I'm a programmer and pretty tech savvy, so I probably would have caught any obvious flaws)

The narrator does a wonderful job adding life to the dialogue and uses different voices for each character when reading chat logs and interview quotes. I almost felt like I was listening to a Stieg Larsson book. If you're at all interested in hackers or how a couple kids from different sides of the planet can take down the websites of massive corporations, get this book!

Parmy Olson provides an incredibly close up and detailed view into these very specific hacker groups. She illuminates the personalities, strategies, tactics and targets involved. Solid narration too.

Abby Craden does a pretty good job narrating, apart from the painfully obvious mispronunciations of a couple words. But it doesn't detract from the story and her voice suits the book well, often conveying senses of foreboding, dread, and hope as the author clearly intended in her story. The accents are a bit hokey, but it's a small issue.

How the World of Anonymous was Uncovered

I hope that the author updates her book with the recent developments into the LulzSec and Anonymous stories.

Good performance and detailed account without being too techy.

In the end, all criminals eventually slip up. The lulz was on them.

Tariopy, the spokesman. No one is completely good or completely bad. The book included a good profile of him.

I believe the content of this book should be graded on a curve: how does one adequately capture the development of an organization that defines itself by its lack of organization? How does one make sense of a so-called "hacktavist" group that does not have a specific political agenda? Lastly, how does one try to capture the meaning of a cyber movement that is still in its infancy?

Despite these issues, author Parmy Olson does an adequate job of giving a coherent account Anonymous, LulzSec and related cyber groups. She focuses on a few central key figures like "Sebu", "Topiary" and "Kayla" and tries to show how these figures reflect different sides of Anonymous. For example, Sebu represents the political-minded hacktavist side, Topiary represents the "lulz" side and Kayla the hard-core hacker side. I think this strategy was effective since it gives the reader the sense that while Anonymous, LulzSec, etc are frequently talked about as a single entity within the media the motivations of the people who identify with these group vary wildly.

I have two criticisms of this audiobook. The first regards the content. I thought the author at times went off into unnecessary tangents, introducing periphery figures that didn't add much to the book, or quoted chat logs for longer than was needed. My second criticism regards the narration. I don't know who's idea it was to have the narrator use different accents for each speaker because they were annoying and even distracting at certain points (Barret Brown's Texas accent immediately comes to mind). If I had to it over again, I would have bought a paper or e-book version rather than get the audiobook.

It's a great look inside the real world of Anonymous & lulzsec, it will really educate the uniformed.

I have not listened to anything else Abby Craden has done but I would have no problem listening to her read another book. My only issue with her is that she mispronounces some very simple words, the main one that stood out for me was Linux, she pronounces it (line-ex) when it is pronounced (Lin-ex). That and the other mispronunciations of some very simple every day computing words drove me a little nuts But other than that she was a joy to listen to.

historical, depressing, enthralling

I might recommend this. The only problems are that it has a lot of vulgarity, obscenity, and graphic things, but it's an open window into what it's like in the under-world of the internet, so I don't think that's necessarily bad, it's just depressing.

The reading is in a very proud sounding lilt without much other emotion which tends to flatten all the accents. I'm not sure if they're bad accents or if it's the proud sound to every phrase, but something is wrong with the accents especially. They're a bit irritating.

No, this wasn't a book that I wanted to listen to all in one sitting, but most books are long enough that it would be hard to anyways. The off accents are too grating in this one, however for that to happen.

This book is very thoughtful and well researched. It is really quite facinating. I felt like I got to know the Anons, their world(s) and a variety of dangers that I never even knew existed. I thought the characterization of the key "players" in LOLs raids were particularly strong and allowed me to connect with the people behind the screen names. In the end, I even felt sympathy for the characters and the "crimes" they had committed.

While the middle section of the book seemed to drag I throughly enjoyed most of the book. I was left feeling very sympathetic for some of the people who were naively sucked into commiting felonies that at the time they thought were harmless pranks. It was stricking and un-nereving to see how easy these people can disrupt internet commerce or hack into private information.