Tips...and a Whole Lot More

As with every volume in this series, annoyances and fixes are the heart of this book. But each chapter features more than just gripes and solutions. You'll find sidebars listing the essential things you should do to protect your privacy, software packages you need, the ways your boss (or the government) can spy on you, and web sites you can visit to learn about your rights. You'll find tables and charts detailing the kind of information that's collected, and which states do a better job of protecting you. Sprinkled liberally through the book are "Privacy in Peril" sidebars brief, cautionary dispatches from the frontlines of the data wars, taken from published accounts. Finally, Chapters 2 through 6 end with a quick numerical look at how our privacy is evaporating, which I've called (with no originality whatsoever) "Privacy by the Numbers."