Protect Your Tech: Your geek-free guide to a secure and private digital life

by Mish Slade

If your password for every website is "monkey" or "iloveyou"...you need to read this book.

Learn, in one afternoon, everything you need to know to keep your personal data secure and private when you work, shop and play online – using (mostly) free online tools.

Last updated in October 2014 to cover the latest solutions to major digital threats.

Like most people, you rely heavily on your laptop or smartphone for many aspects of your personal and business life. But what would happen if your phone or laptop got stolen - what information would a criminal be able to find out about you? 

The answer is: enough to get into your bank accounts and control your entire online identity. And in fact, your device never needs to leave your sight for you to be exposed to these risks every time you go online.

Protect Your Tech is an entertaining, action-oriented guide to safeguarding your digital life. With simple, jargon-free explanations, you'll learn easy steps you can take to keep your personal data safely under wraps.

Find out:

How easy it is for someone to crack your online passwords – even “clever” ones like “Pa55w0rd!” The simple, but crucial, steps you need to take to protect yourself when you’re using your phone or laptop from a café, airport or other public place How to make sure that even if your device gets stolen, the thief can’t find out anything about you The dangers you’re exposed to if you use a “cloud” storage solution like Dropbox or Google Drive – and what to do about it How to avoid getting scammed when you’re buying online And much more!

Contains step-by-step instructions for desktop (Windows and Mac) and mobile (iOS and Android) devices.

The same principles will apply if you use other operating systems (like Linux, Blackberry or Windows Phone), but the recommended software won’t work on these platforms.

If you’re a security professional, this book won’t be for you.

You won’t learn how to hide from governments or use highly complex military-grade security techniques. Instead, you’ll be introduced to the most common threats you’ll encounter as an everyday internet user, and easy steps you can take – with only a bare minimum of tech knowledge – to keep yourself safer than 99% of the online population.

With clear, practical explanations, a complete lack of jargon and a hefty dollop of humor, Protect Your Tech is an easy, fun way to transform yourself from an average internet user into an unusually safe one.

Scroll to the top of the page and click “Look Inside” for a preview!

201 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 20, 2014

Reviews

[Cubbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good coverage of the basics

I'm pretty tech savvy, and was mostly reading this for fun. Despite that, I was impressed with how well it covered the basics. There are a few places where the information given is a bit off, and I think they could have spent a little more time to explaing some things. The traffic going through a VPN can still be observed by the VPN provider, two step authentication is NOT as secure through text message (they can be intercepted), and you shouldn't automatically trust Wi-Fi connections from places you know. Those are my for instances. I'm also surprised they didn't cover backing up data at all, because that's the primary way people can protect their stuff! Do yourself a favor and look up the 3-2-1 rule of backups, and never be worried about your truthfully fragile data again.