Introduction

I thought I knew something about technology when I started writing this. Perhaps I did, but over the course of my research the world changed, I changed, and technology changed perhaps more than anything else. One dollar invested in the NASDAQ when my research began was worth about 19 cents by the time I got around to writing about the Internet boom (and bust). When I began this investigation the greatest threat to technology was the Y2K bug. Now it's cyber-terrorism!

The list is a long one. Denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) and killer Internet worms like Nimda, Code Red, and MSBlast were virtually unheard of when I began my research. I'm not one hundred percent certain, but to the best of my knowledge the phrase "identity theft" did not yet exist.

While I researched this book, the tech boom fizzled, the Internet bubble burst, the NASDAQ collapsed , and Al Qaeda attacked America on September 11, 2001. In essence, this book is about the technological and legal ramifications of all that. What I fear most from the fallout has been dubbed "the death of privacy" by noted law professor and cyber-privacy expert A. Michael Froomkin. The institutions and corporations we trust most have begun hacking us, suggests Froomkin in his article entitled "The Death of Privacy?" published in the Stanford Law Review .

Big business and Big Brother are the biggest hackers of all! Technology has become a nasty business. You know what I'm talking about: pop-up ads, cookies, spyware, spam, junk faxes, junk mail, telemarketing calls. You're a target and your personal information is a commodity! It is systematically harvested by information brokers with vast databases that do nothing but spit out computer profiles 24 hours a day. A nice fat dossier all about you is available for under a hundred bucks at your friendly neighborhood information broker! Unfortunately, most people don't realize that.

Technology, advertising, the media, and government have converged to invade our privacy. This book exposes the dangers (Part I) and proposes a practical defense (Part II).

What You'll Find in this Book

Invasion of Privacy is about people; people who do good and evil things with technology, people who are victims of technology, and victims who become avengers by turning the tables on the technology that victimizes them. The trouble with most technology books is that they read like they were written by a computer. A computer could not have written Invasion of Privacy because it consists of stories about people!

You'll meet Steve Kirsch, a Silicon Valley multimillionaire who sued the company that inundated him with junk faxes for $2.2 trillion dollars. You'll meet Jason Eric Smith, a struggling college student who set up a sting worthy of Paul Newman and Robert Redford when a con artist ripped-off his Apple PowerBook in an eBay auction. You'll meet Dwain and many hackers like him who anonymously save our butts!

I sought input from leading experts in the fields of computer security and privacy, such as George Kurtz, Steve Gibson, Ron Kessler, and Michael Froomkin, to provide you with practical steps you can take to protect your privacy, your personal information, and yourself. If you enjoy reading a good mystery, Invasion of Privacy is for you!