Swiped

How to Protect Yourself in a World Full of Scammers, Phishers, and Identity Thieves

By: Adam Levin

Narrated by: Adam Levin

Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

Increasingly, identity theft is a fact of life. We might once have hoped to protect ourselves from hackers with airtight passwords and aggressive spam folders, and those are good ideas as far as they go. But the truth is there are people out there - a lot of them - who treat stealing your identity as a full-time job. One such company is a nameless firm located in Russia, which has a trove of over a billion Internet passwords. Another set up a website full of live streams of hacked web cameras, showing everything from people's offices and lobbies to the feeds from baby monitors. Even purchases made in person are still logged by retailers like Target, who are famously vulnerable to hackers.

Adam Levin, a longtime consumer advocate and identity fraud expert, is your guide to this brave new world. By telling memorable stories and extracting the relevant lessons, he offers a strategy for dealing with these risks. You may not be able to prevent identity theft, but you certainly shouldn't wait until it happens to take action. Levin's approach is defined by the three M's: minimizing risk, monitoring your identity, and managing the damage. The audiobook is also organized around the different problems caused by identity theft: financial, criminal, medical, familial, etc., enabling listeners to dip in to the sections most relevant to them.

Swiped is a practical, lively audiobook that is essential to surviving the ever-changing world of online security. It is invaluable not only for preventing problems but for helping cope when they arrive.

©2015 Adam Levin (P)2015 Gildan Media LLC

Informative on as personal level

I have read several books on internet security and this one was targeted on a personal level with steps for prevention as well as what to do in case you become a victim of identity theft yourself.

I only wish this was a horror novel.

This is probably one of the most important books you will read this year. It may be the most important book you ever read. Any which way, you should read it twice. I'

The information in this book is critical not just for your day-to-day life, but also if you were in the process of taking care of the estate of a loved one.

It will help you in terms of being more transparent and more obviously honest and by assuring those who rely on you and work with you that you have their best interests at heart.

Good advice but not too advanced

Good advice - The advice applies to the general population/business. But if you want to get more advanced this is not the book for you.

Story - I agree with the author in terms of emphasizing the seriousness of financial fraud and other types of scams for example you can get pulled over by the police just because your license plate scan triggers this... But I don't like that he's adding paranoia in the story. I'm not the first one to say this in the reviews. People are scared enough there's no need to add more paranoia. There is a difference between information that helps people and information that makes them paranoid (this people paralyzed).

Beyond the basics - Research OSINT, elicitation, spear phishing and look into Michael Bazzell's blog/podcast.

Important in 2020

This books helps to get basic knowledge on how to protect yourself

It’s a must read for everyone today