Your Safety and Privacy Online – The CIA and NSA
The purpose of this book is to provide an average computer user with the knowledge that will help them stay safe while online, as well as help them make privacy choices that work for them. My goal is to explain online threats in terms that don't require a technical background to understand. All techno-speak will be limited, and where it cannot be avoided, I will first be explained in common non-computer terms. This book should be accessible to anyone with enough computer knowledge to use Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, do some online shopping, use google to search for cat videos, and pay your bills online, all the important stuff. If you are comfortable doing those things, you are in the core demographic for this book.
While this book was written with a US consumer in mind, this book will be equally applicable all over the world. There may be an occasional inside joke that folks outside the USA won't understand, but that shouldn't detract anything from the book. What is different about this book is that I'm targeting non-technical folks, and I'm explaining the issues and the threats without resulting to scare tactics or threats which seem so prevalent in today's security training. Something called FUD, Fear Uncertainty, and Doubt is very prevalent in today's information security space. I'm avoiding all FUD in this book. If I were to summarize this book in a few short bullet points, it would be like this:
· Don't be clicking on links or attachments in strange, unexpected emails
· Don't share your password, like ever
· Do use a password manager for all your password
· Do use long, unpredictable, and unique passwords for every site
· Do use critical thinking skills and don't be swayed by emotions
About Siggi Bjarnason (Seattle, Washington Author)
Siggi Bjarnason is expert cybersecurity professional with four decades of computer and online experience. Born in Iceland, Siggi spent much of his adult life in Seattle, Washington. In Washington, he lived through the development of a groundbreaking form of technology that would revolutionize not only the tech industry but the world as we know it. Everyone now knows this pioneering technology as the internet.
In the early 1980s, while still a teenager, Siggi developed an interest in computers as a hobby. By the mid-1990s, he turned that hobby into a profession. You could say that he was a pioneer in the birth of the internet when he worked as a network engineer at Microsoft during its infancy. Siggi has communicated and explored online since the mid-1980s, even though the first public web browser wasn’t available until 1994.
In his free time, Siggi enjoys the simple things in life like listening to music, attending live theater events, and going ballroom dancing. Additionally, Siggi enjoys volunteering for organizations that help his community. He is a volunteer for the American Red Cross, Public Health Reserve Corps (PHRC), and other similar organizations. For Siggi, nothing is more important than finding ways to enjoy life, whether that be through computers, working with others, or listening to his favorite album.