A comprehensive resource for those looking to protect themselves from identity theft.
Tech entrepreneur and author Smith considers the growing threat of cybercrime and offers ways to respond to it, personally and politically.
In 2018, the author was targeted by what he calls a “relentless band of identity thieves” who wreaked years of havoc on his financial life. Fortunately, as a tech-firm professional, he had the knowledge and resources to fight back against them, but it still took five years of effort, and exacted an emotional toll. As online connectivity becomes a principal feature of modern life, the author says, people are increasingly vulnerable to identify theft, and the problem is only worsened by the negligence of the “profit-obsessed corporations” that have become the “custodians of our private lives.” Identity theft scams are on the rise; in 2020, Smith notes, they collectively led to $56 billion in losses for consumers. He astutely recommends a diverse anti-cybercrime approach that includes legislation that protects consumer data more robustly, the elimination of Social Security numbers, and wider adoption of secure blockchain technology. However, the crux of the problem, he says, is a general lack of personal vigilance: “Cybercriminals, specifically hackers, play on our very human weakness, carelessness, or trust to take advantage of us. Because they know they’re running a scam and we don’t, that information asymmetry gives them the advantage.” This book is remarkably thorough, and Smith devotes most of it to equipping readers with methods to protect their data and respond to breaches that will almost inevitably occur, no matter how vigilant they are. He covers a wide range of ways to avoid the “self-sabotage” upon which criminals rely, and he conveys it all in clear language that will be accessible even to those who aren’t tech-savvy. Sometimes he resorts to the sort of incendiary language that one associates with infomercials (“You can’t fight a war if you don’t know your enemy, and make no mistake, we’re all at war”), and the book does indeed conclude with the author advocating his own data-protection firm, DFend. Nonetheless, this is an impressively helpful guide.
A comprehensive resource for those looking to protect themselves from identity theft.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781645433934
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.
In the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama recounts the hard path to the White House.
In this long, often surprisingly candid narrative, Obama depicts a callow youth spent playing basketball and “getting loaded,” his early reading of difficult authors serving as a way to impress coed classmates. (“As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he admits.) Yet seriousness did come to him in time and, with it, the conviction that America could live up to its stated aspirations. His early political role as an Illinois state senator, itself an unlikely victory, was not big enough to contain Obama’s early ambition, nor was his term as U.S. Senator. Only the presidency would do, a path he painstakingly carved out, vote by vote and speech by careful speech. As he writes, “By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low.” The author speaks freely about the many obstacles of the race—not just the question of race and racism itself, but also the rise, with “potent disruptor” Sarah Palin, of a know-nothingism that would manifest itself in an obdurate, ideologically driven Republican legislature. Not to mention the meddlings of Donald Trump, who turns up in this volume for his idiotic “birther” campaign while simultaneously fishing for a contract to build “a beautiful ballroom” on the White House lawn. A born moderate, Obama allows that he might not have been ideological enough in the face of Mitch McConnell, whose primary concern was then “clawing [his] way back to power.” Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book, as smoothly written as his previous books, is Obama’s cleareyed scene-setting for how the political landscape would become so fractured—surely a topic he’ll expand on in the next volume.
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6316-9
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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