The Smart Girls Guide To Privacy is ‘the talk’ 2.0 that all girls need. Heck, everybody needs this book. We all want our privacy, the majority just don’t realize how much we have already lost on that front.
While I am not a girl, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Why is it written towards a female audience? The author, Violet Blue, goes to great length to answer that question. The Internet is not a good place for ladies. Stalkers and obsessive people make the Internet more filled with hazards and harassment for females. She shares her stalker experience and other examples to explain its importance. The old thought “if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide” was never true but you still hear it applied to arguments about social media privacy, hacked celebrities, or Internet snooping. Keeping on top of your privacy can make the difference to your career success, your relationships, and your safety. (This is a perfect example of why domain WHOIS proxies should not be discontinued for “business” websites. If you show ads on your site, you would be considered a business and your street address would be easily requested.)
I enjoyed reading this book and am proud to be able to promote it with this review. You will read The Smart Girls Guide To Privacy three times: once when you read it cover-to-cover, a second time when you flip to certain sections and review your settings along with it, and a third time after you have it setting on your bookshelf and refer to it any time you have a question, hear about a company being breached, or are the victim of identity theft. Ideally, if you follow this book, your chances of becoming a victim of identity theft should significantly decrease.
The Smart Girls Guide To Privacy covers a variety of practical steps to improve your privacy. These include practicing good habits of locking your phone and computer, reviewing your settings for social media, changing your browser, phone, or app settings, and using tools to keep you safe such as VPN, Tor, or browser extensions that reducing tracking capabilities. It is presented simply and straight-forward without judgement – you have your right to privacy but there are others looking to take that right away for profit or perversion.
Everybody deserves their privacy if they want it. Reading this book will help you understand the value of your privacy and what different settings means. It explains many of the topics that everybody should know to a wider topic. It includes a list of resources to immediately begin improving your privacy. If I were to find any faults with the book, I think it stayed with its digital focus a little too closely, a section about shredding important documents would have covered the bases. There is also a section about finding out if somebody is using your computer where it is recommended to use a keylogger. I think this is a bad idea because it could compromise your own security and put all of the information you are trying to keep private in one place. Instead, change your passwords and remove physical access to your devices if you are suspicious.
The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy: Practical Tips for Staying Safe Online by Violet Blue and published by No Starch Press is available in Kindle and paperback formats from Amazon.com.
No Starch Press provided a copy of this book for review upon request. We appreciate their doing so, that we may present great content to our readers.