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Too many cyberspace pundits fail to deliver constructive ideas on how to deal with issues of safety, privacy, and censorship online. Protecting Yourself Online, penned by members of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), is a splendid exception that makes good on its claim to be the definitive resource for practical solutions to these problems.

The authors cover a lot of territory in a concise, direct manner. Among the topics are free expression and online censorship, reconciling individual liberties with community standards, secure communications and online commerce, and the protection of intellectual property online. One excellent chapter deals with netiquette, spam, hackers, computer viruses, and flames. A major focus is placed on recognizing online spoofs and scams, whether it be an e-mail advertisement that is too good to be true or people who aren't who they say they are.

Additional topics include protecting yourself from spam and mail bombs, issues of government control online, and how can you protect your personal information (including credit-card numbers, medical information, and passwords) by using encryption and authentication. The book also delves into dealing with e-mail flames, children on the Internet, and even how the U.S. Constitution might apply over an international network. Each issue is discussed calmly, rationally, and without sensationalism.

The EFF, founded in 1990 as a nonprofit organization to defend civil liberties and rights in cyberspace, has consistently been at the forefront of the debate on freedom and responsibility online. Perhaps its most famous case was the campaign against online censorship that started in reaction to the Communications Decency Act's initial passage. --Elizabeth LewisBook Description
Like any new frontier, cyberspace offers both exhilarating possibilities and unforeseen hazards. As personal information about us travels the globe on high-speed networks, often with neither our knowledge nor our consent, a solid understanding of privacy and security issues is vital to the preservation of our rights and civil liberties. In reaping the benefits of the information age while safeguarding ourselves from its perils, the choices we make and the precedents we establish today will be central in defining the future of the electronic frontier.

Since 1991, the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has worked to protect freedoms and advocate responsibility in new media and the online world. In Protecting Yourself Online,  Robert Gelman has drawn on the collective insight and experience of EFF to present a comprehensive guide to self-protection in the electronic frontier. In accessible, clear-headed language, Protecting Yourself Online  addresses such issues as:

• avoiding spam [junk mail]
• spotting online scams and hoaxes
• protecting yourself from identity theft and fraud
• guarding your email privacy [and knowing when you can't]
• assessing the danger of viruses
• keeping the net free of censorship and safe for your children
• protecting your intellectual property

Produced by the leading civil libertarians of the digital age, and including a foreword by one of the most respected leaders in global business and the cyberworld, Esther Dyson, Protecting Yourself Online is an essential resource for new media newcomers and old Internet hands alike. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Disappointed...
I read this book and was very disappointed.The title is mis-leading, as there is really very little information about protecting yourself on-line.What little information could be found was introductory to say the least. I also felt that the book wasa lobbying tool, trying to bring me over tothe civil liberties world.A thumbs down...

Had to counter that one-star review
Sure, it's not too detailed, and sure, a lot of tech people are already going to be familiar with a lot of the information in it, but for novices, it's great. It's a great book to give the uncle who keeps sending you falsevirus alarms, or the grandmother that doesn't understand the civilliberties implications of the Communications Decency Act -- or the cousinthat thinks hackers are going to break into her bank account if she buys amodem.

Not worth the money.
If you need a book about how to protect yourself online don't buy thisone, it won't help you. The authors are just taking stock of the well-knownproblems in the Internet and offer some links to other sides.

I've read this one too
The author of this book spends all his time detailing the problem withouta single keystroke of solution.Is there a book out there that realy turnsthe advantage back to parents and Internet users?The only book I like is"Life and Death on the Internet" by Keith A. Schroeder.At leasttwo-thirds of Life and Death is solutions.Who cares about the problem. We all know it exists, just open a newspaper.I would pass on this book. Life and Death on the Internet is better.

I've read this one too
The author of this book spends all his time detailing the problem withouta single keystroke of solution.Is there a book out there that realy turnsthe advantage back to parents and Internet users?The only book I like is"Life and Death on the Internet" by Keith A. Schroeder.At leasttwo-thirds of Life and Death is solutions.Who cares about the problem. We all know it exists, just open a newspaper.I would pass on this book. Life and Death on the Internet is better. ... Read more

Book Description
Inclusion Through Media (ITM) is a programme of projects across the UK which use audio-visual media to engage young people and excluded individuals and communities. It focuses on projects that bring the target groups together with media professionals to produce high-quality products for maximum impact. ITM projects stress innovative methods and participatory approaches.One of ITM's objectives is using ICT for the production and distribution of learning materials and products developed by partners and target groups. Converge is a programme to enable young people to showcase their audio/visual works on the web. Goldsmiths produced in collaboration with Hi8Us this handbook and workshop programme to enable young people to make use of existing sites like the Internet Archive, Participatory Culture, YouTube and Video Syndication Network and to publish videos on own sites using Free an Open source software. ... Read more

Book Description
Sometimes you have to do good engineering to straighten out twisted politics. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization that was founded to ensure that the principles embodied in the Constitution and Bill of Rights are protected as new communications technologies emerge, and O"Reilly, the premier publisher of computer and computer-related books, team up to produce Cracking DES: Secrets ofEncryption Research, Wiretap Politics & Chip Design. By doing thisthey have exploded the government-supported myth that theData Encryption Standard (DES) has real security.

National Security Agency and FBI officials say our civil liberties must be curtailed because the government can't crack the security of DES to wiretap bad guys. But somehow a tiny nonprofit has designed and built a $200,000 machine that cracks DES in a week. Who's lying, and why?

For the first time, the book reveals full technical details on how researchers and data-recovery engineers can build a working DES Cracker. It includes design specifications and board schematics, as well as full source code for the custom chip, a chip simulator, and the software that drives the system. The U.S. government makes it illegal to publish these details on the Web, but they're printed here in a form that's easy to read and understand, legal to publish, and convenient for scanning into your computer.

The Data Encryption Standard withstood the test of time for twenty years. This book shows exactly how it was brought down. Every cryptographer, security designer, and student of cryptography policy should read this book to understand how the world changed as it fell. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Useful to both cryppies and hardware geeks
In 1997, the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced an experiment. On a budget of $200,000, they blew the roof off of something that had long been suspected: the long-time United States Data Encryption Standard was not secure.

This is something that had been suspected for some time. The original Lucifer encrypt that it had been based on had been designed by IBM with a 64-bit keyspace (quite large for the late 70s), but had been reduced to 56 bits, reducing the number of possible keys by two orders of magnitude. It was widely suspected that this was due to the NSA's desire that there not be a standard in the public domain that they couldn't crack; indeed, DES was slowly obsoleted over the years by ciphers like RSA and PGP. In 1997, it was announced that the EFF had created, using an array of custom chips, a relatively inexpensive system that was capable of a brute-force attack on DES, and came to the conclusion that such systems were probably already in the posession of not only the NSA (the largest purchaser of computing power in the world) but also numerous corporate and governmental entities that could afford to pay substantially less than the EFF paid for a technology that was likely not only available on the QT but quite mature.

This book comes with everything needed to build a DES cracker -- operational notes, history, and even the VHDL code needed to build the custom chips and C code to control the chip array. This makes it of interest not only to cryptography researchers (who probably consider this book old news after seven years) but to those learning about hardware and embedded systems development; the extensive listings make for good study material.

It's a worthwhile book to buy for anyone interested in privacy and cryptography concerns, though for the layperson Simon Singh's Code Book is probably a more general introduction to the issues involved.

Detailed blueprint on how-to-do it.
This is a "killer book" in every respect.

The authors have done a tremendous service to the entire population of the World by exposing the vulnerability of the DES algorithm. The DES algorithm is the formulafor encrypting your bank account and keeping other secrets safe.

DES hasbecome unless and the authors have taken more than a little risk to informyou including absolute, undeniable proof in the form of "showing youhow", down to the last detail.

The books not only gives detailedplans and references but also the correct current political motivationbehind the desire to retain the DES and how it affects you.

Details ofhow government "politicking" of your civil rights and how thoserights are being "watered down"for the benefit of theintelligence community is explained, too.

I don't personally plan onspending $200,000 or so to build a "engine for cracking DES", butI do believe that the money spent for this book was one of the betterinvestments I have made. The books contents have been placed into the public domain by the authors. Tell a friend.

Bravo, guys! ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Security Management, published by American Society for Industrial Security on July 1, 2002. The length of the article is 447 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Hot debates on Chilling letters. (Tech Talk).(Brief Article)
Author: Peter Piazza
Publication: Security Management (Refereed)
Date: July 1, 2002
Publisher: American Society for Industrial Security
Volume: 46Issue: 7Page: 42(1)

Article Type: Brief Article

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more