The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy: Practical Tips for Staying Safe Online

by Violet Blue

The whirlwind of social media, online dating, and smartphones can make life a dream—or a nightmare. For every trustworthy website, there are countless jerks, bullies, and scam artists who would harvest your personal information for their own purposes. But you can fight back, right now.

In The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy, award-winning author and investigative journalist Violet Blue shows you how women are targeted online and how to keep yourself safe. Blue’s practical, user-friendly advice will show you how to:

•Delete personal content from websites
•Use website and browser privacy controls effectively
•Recover from and prevent identity theft
•Figure out where the law protects you—and where it doesn’t
•Set up safe online profiles
•Remove yourself from people finder websites

Even if your privacy has already been compromised, don’t panic. It’s not too late to take control. Let The Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy help you cut through the confusion and start protecting your online life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Technology, Self Help, Feminism, Reference, Ebooks, Computer Science

168 pages, Paperback

First published March 28, 2014

About the author

Violet Blue has authored and edited over 40 books, including five (Bronze, Silver and Gold) IPPY award-winners, some of which are now in eight translations. Violet was a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show, when Ms. Winfrey featured Violet's book on women and pornography (11/17/09). That book is also excerpted and featured on Oprah Winfrey's website, as well as in O, The Oprah Magazine.

Violet owns and operates Digita Publications (digitapub.com), an indie digital publisher of e-books and audio books. Rather than a royalty system, Digita books share all sales with the authors fairly and transparently, featuring books in both DRM-free versions and for Kindle on Amazon.

Her online sexuality blog, Tiny Nibbles, is one of the Internet's longest-running sex blogs, and has won many accolades and awards. For her day job, Ms. Blue is a journalist on hacking, crime, cybersecurity, privacy, and at-risk populations for outlets ranging from Engadget to CNET, and occasionally outlets like CBS News, CNN and O the Oprah Magazine.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Online privacy advice aimed at females, but relevant to males as well. It's for mature readers, given the frequent mentions of sexual topics and profanity. It's a bit dated since it was first published in 2014, but even taking that into account, it's not as informative or helpful as other online privacy books I've read.

Blue, an investigative journalist, describes the book as

… a guide to making sure you don’t share too much. You’ll learn how to look good to potential employers (or potential dates) and safeguard your privacy from sleazy marketers, unethical megacorporations, scammers, stalkers, bull**** artists, and anyone who wants to silence women online.

She explains that,

The sad fact is that women have more reasons to be concerned about online privacy than men do, because women are at greater risk for physical violence and are directly targeted more often than men. … Women are more likely than men to be singled out online for stalking, harassment, invasions of privacy, and threats of physical violence.

Sadly, she speaks from personal experience:

I was cyberstalked, threatened, abused, and harassed online by two creeps (a man and a woman who met each other while attacking me) for over a year.

I read this to increase my knowledge of digital security and privacy.

Notes
Get Smart
Use different email addresses for different online accounts. Set them to forward to the address(s) you check.

View your social media profiles as someone else, then adjust the privacy settings.

Put tape, sticky notes, or stickers over all cameras (phone, laptop, tablet, Kindle, etc.).

Never scan or photograph your ID and send it to anyone online. You’re not legally required to show it. If you must send it to someone, black out your photo and ID number.

Use a password manager like 1Password, LastPass, KeePass.

You Got Hacked
If you have a website, enable WHOIS privacy.

Don't link apps to social media accounts. If someone cracks one app or account, they could get access to others. Think carefully before allowing apps to access your Google and Apple accounts.

If you need data recovered from a hard drive, use a reputable company like DriveSavers. Expect to pay $1,500 or more.

Female Trouble
Drown unwanted online content about you by producing more positive content about yourself.

Ask that unwanted online content about you be taken down by sending each website and its host a takedown request. You might find this information in the website’s terms of service, privacy policy, or a separate DMCA policy. When a website doesn’t have one, send your takedown request via email to abuse@.com, DMCA@.com, and admin@.com, and send a physical copy to any address you can find for the website.

Reputation­Defender is the biggest business doing reputation cleanup.

Consider using privacy companies such as Abine, which remove your private information from people-search websites.

Identity Theft
What to do if you suspect identity theft
• Freeze all compromised accounts.
• Place a fraud alert on your credit.
• Order your credit reports and note anything that is incorrect.
• Create an Identity Theft Report with the FTC.
• Use your credit reports and Identity Theft Report to fix your credit reports and get information about the thief.
• Call appropriate authorities (IRS: 1.800.908.4490; Social Security Administration: 1.800.269.0271).
• Alert businesses involved in fraudulent charges.

If your device is lost or stolen, change your passwords for the accounts that can be accessed from that device.

Apple and Google provide anti-theft apps, and other options include Lookout, Kaspersky, McAfee, AVG, Where’s My Droid, and Prey.

Before you pass a phone on, wipe or reset it. Wipe or remove the SD card. Remove the SIM card.

How to Share
Before you permanently stop using a site, delete your account; don't just disable it.

Before you pass a device on, check the device manufacturer’s website for steps to permanently delete its data.

Dating and Sexytime
Privacy browser plugins and extensions
• Adblock Plus: Blocks ads and tracking for most advertisers.
• AppLock
• AVG PrivacyFix: Manages all social media privacy settings.
• Blur: Blocks tracking, password management, disposable email addresses, and much more.
• BugMeNot: Bypasses the sign-in on websites that require your info to simply read a page.
• Cocoon: Blocks tracking, offers disposable email addresses.
• Disconnect: Blocks Facebook tracking.
• Do Not Track
• DuckDuckGo: A non-tracking search engine.
• Ghostery: Alerts you to bugs, tracking, and ad networks on sites you visit but can be overwhelming and controversially resells anonymized user metrics.
• HTTPS Everywhere: Enables encryption automatically on sites that support it.

Ninja Tricks
Try one-time use, disposable credit cards.

Consider a Masked Card. Blur allows you to create unique, disposable credit cards in specific amounts. They work like prepaid gift cards.

Set up a mailing address that’s different from your home address to minimize risk of identity theft, stalking, etc. Rent a mailbox at your local post office or somewhere like a UPS Store.

Consider a free VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone number. You can forward it as necessary. Skype is inexpensive, and Google Voice is free. Another option is a disposable masking phone number service like Burner, which lets you create a temporary phone number.

Mailvelope is a browser extension that allows secure email.

Keep online messaging secure with Off-the-Record (OTR) messaging.

Protect your identity by using the free Tor Browser or apps that use Tor, like Orbot for Android.

When comparing VPN options, read recent reviews at TorrentFreak. Another option to consider is Cocoon, which hides your IP address.

To limit tracking by Facebook and similar sites, use them in a separate browser, or use browser extensions that block Facebook’s cookies.

I Hate Passwords
Refuse to provide your passwords to anyone who asks for them, unless you know it’s against the law not to. It’s illegal for employers to ask for your personal passwords.

[Tommy Collison · Rating 2 out of 5]

While it's true that women are disproportionately targeted by creeps online, I felt the book got swamped in an us-versus-them mentality. When describing buying a new phone and being wary of sales associates signing you up for privacy-invasive carrier services (a completely legitimate piece of advice), the author writes: "It just takes a second to interrupt him and tell him to let you see each screen". Why "him"?

Overall, I think the book doesn't go far enough -- if PGP encryption seems too complex to set up, why not write a straightforward guide? Why settle for less? All the tips in the book are good, but they're only the basics.

[Jolis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ceļvedis internetpratībā.

Domāju, tiem, kas izauguši ar internetu daudz kas jau ir pašsaprotams. Bet atkārtošana esot zināšanu māte! Piemēram, nevienam nenāks par ļaunu nočekot, vai mīļākais sociālais tīkls atkal jūsu privātuma iestatījumus nav pamainījis pats.

Lai gan autore vairāk koncentrējas tieši uz sieviešu drošību internetvidē, jo tieši sievietes ir vairāk pakļautas vardarbībai, te šo to noderīgu varētu atrast abi dzimumi.

[Amy (Other Amy) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this more, as the writing itself was engaging and informative, but as a guide it skipped around too much and there was disappointingly little actual 'how to'. I learned of whole worlds of malice out in cyberspace I had no idea were possible, but I'm still pretty fuzzy on what I need to do to combat the baddies. I'd apologize for needing more hand holding, but that's the reason I bought the book.

[Ashley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Review coming soon!

[Andreas Ragen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Practical ways to keep oneself safe online.
Also a pretty nice fast and easy read. I like it, even though I'm not a girl.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book explaining both why you should care for online safety and how you should go about it. If the worst has already happened, this book can still help you recover. It sticks to the point and offers practical todos and links. It also explains how the whole thing is a process, and how patience is needed, but that if you get on top of things and stay there you can exercise quite a bit of control as well as keep yourself (better) out of harms way.

The only reason this book isn't getting five stars from me is that while it is directed towards women, it actually is a little unfair towards men. It falls into generalisations, offers no sources to the data it claims to have, and relies upon anecdotes. The writer at times admits that the same things do happen to men, but then falls back into trivializing the issue. I full well believe you can write a book oriented towards women without doing this. Or alternatively, while written by a woman, this could have been a gender neutral book. Even if the claim that women are more often targets is true, and even if the author only has examples on specific ways that women are at risk, the author could have worked with other sources or stuck to what is true for all genders. Because while stories about how marketeers target women specifically are interesting to know about, they don't really add that much in the end.

[Sean Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is great for those who are just starting to learn about, or want a quick guide to safe online practices. As a guy, I am at a much lesser risk from many of the dangers laid out in The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy, but these lessons can be used by anyone wanting to mitigate future risks, or fix past damages. Since this was written in 2015, and online companies and resources change quickly, a few things are a little out of date, and several topics covered here read like foreshadowing of recent scandals. Despite that, this book has good and practicable advice that can be followed by anyone, regardless of their technical savvy.

[Kelly]

It's a wakeup call to how easily it is to scope out all of your private information. I love how straightforward it is, and not only does it talk about where your information may be, but there are multiple opportunities to work through locking down tightly. A fantastic, much-needed resource. Any woman on the internet needs to read this and take action where she feels it necessary. This made me rethink a lot of things.

[Tassos · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't give often 2 stars to books, I usually tend to over-rate a book I read. But I didn't get much out of this book. Okay, maybe it has to do with my experience and my obsession with security and privacy, but I think that it is just a dry book that could have easily been a 15 page manual with checklists and some examples.

[Helen Mary · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like the links she shared but it just feels like it could have been a long article instead of a book. That said, I think the author is a fascinating person with a lot of substantial material to share but the desire to dress it down to layman's terms compromised the quality of the information tremendously.

[Pavel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Зачем
А
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М

[Clara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es, ni más ni menos, una guía. Sintética y directa, tiene un propósito didáctico e indicaciones para resolverlo: comprende el tráfico de tu información, y toma control sobre él.

Se centra en el revenge porn (Violet Blue es educadora sexual, y estoy segura de que se enfrenta frecuentemente a historias sobre esta violencia). Parece conversacional, como una amiga que te dice: esto me ha pasado a mí, no quiero que te pase a ti, aquí está lo que yo podría haber hecho.

Pero es superficial. En ocasiones me ha dado la impresión de estar leyendo un post de tumblr muy largo, o una sucesión de ellos. Su información –principalmente sus hipervínculos; no instaléis Ghostery bajo ningún concepto– puede quedar desfasada muy rápido. Un libro impreso parece no ser el mejor formato para este tipo de contenido.

¿Por qué para chicas, y no para chicos? Pues porque las mujeres somos víctimas de ciberataques, abuso y acoso online de forma desproporcionada. Tal y como explica Violet Blue en su introducción, las mujeres navegamos, seamos conscientes o no, con una diana pintada en la espalda. Nos va algo mejor siendo conscientes y empoderándonos en nuestra vida digital. La perspectiva feminista en conversaciones sobre ciberseguridad y protección de la información es refrescante y necesaria.

Cubre los básicos, se lee rápido y es ameno. Puede servir como una buena introducción a la ciberseguridad para las muy principiantes, y eso siempre es un positivo.

[Vỹ Hồng · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book provides an adequate overview of the risks associated with having an online presence and how to protect yourself against said risks.

Since I've been online for a while, I'm already familiar with most of the material, such as don't share personally identifiable information, use VPN, a password manager, etc. But there are also nuggets of new and useful information in there.

I also appreciate the checklists for handling crises (e.g. you are a victim of identity theft). Luckily, I don't need any of these yet, but I'd keep them for reference.

The writing is very casual and quite verbose. It reads more like a blog post than a book. Given that the target audience is teenage girls (I assume), it might not be a bad thing. But frequent readers might find it too wordy.

Overall, the book provides sufficient coverage of the online privacy landscape. But is quite verbose.

[Shanni · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is really, really good. As a cybersecurity student, none of the information included is new to me, but it is vital to anyone who uses the internet. With incredibly accessible language, tons of resources, and example situations, this guide is able to demystify some otherwise technical security concepts. While it doesn't go into technical detail, that's actually preferable for the intended audience, as it doesn't bore or overwhelm. I'd easily recommend this to everyone I know, but especially teenage girls, as Violet Blue writes with them in mind.

[Senthil Kumaran · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a checklist book for the various steps that a person can take to stay secure and manage their privacy online. This is written for general populace, and does a good work to highlights of perils of getting hacked online, problems associated with online privacy. Author provides references to tools and mechanisms that can help person stay safe online.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

A practical field guide to staying safe on the internet. Regarding privacy, this book not only gives the "how" but it also gives the "why". Many people I speak to about this have a hard time understanding why you should protect your privacy on the internet. Now I have a book to refer them to.

[Chrystal Mahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Smart Girl's Guide to Privacy by Violet Blue is an essential, empowering resource for women seeking to protect their online presence in an increasingly digital world. Award-winning author and investigative journalist Violet Blue provides practical, straightforward advice on how women are specifically targeted online and how to safeguard themselves from cyber threats.

This guide tackles a wide range of privacy issues, including managing your personal information across websites, recovering from identity theft, and understanding where the law can—and can’t—help protect you. With easy-to-follow instructions, Blue teaches you how to delete personal content, use privacy settings effectively, and set up safe online profiles.

From social media to online dating and beyond, this book offers crucial insights into navigating the digital landscape safely. Even if your privacy has already been compromised, Blue’s advice will help you regain control and protect your online life moving forward. It's a must-read for women who want to stay secure and informed in the online world.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read to see what gaps there were in my online safety knowledge, and if it is a good book to recommend to younger readers/internet users. It's...fine? It's certainly eye-opening, and correctly highlights the gendered nature and epidemic misogyny of online culture, but doesn't feel like it sufficiently or comprehensively provides the "practical tips" that it promises. It didn't help that the edition I read is a few years old and already felt rather out of date, with some of the software it recommended being now defunct or superseded.

[Johan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Impressive, extensive, scary, ... I should probably read it a second time and apply everything that's mentioned in this book. Given that it is a guide it is lacking a bit in the how-to department. It's a pity it is only available in English otherwise I would give it as a present to my nieces in a year or two.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Practical, well-written intro to assessing safety issues and solutions for being on social media and online in general. It’s a couple of years old now, so some resources are of date, but Blue provides enough different options that a reader can find something equivalent in her lists. I’ll be using to assess my online life this year. Recommended.

[Kali Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm buying this book for every woman I know. Being 'very online' carries particular dangers for women (especially women of color) and it's easy to be lax in enforcing your own privacy when social media and websites don't always make it easy. This book gives a clear run through of everything women should be aware of and gives practical suggestions on how to keep yourself self.

[Kurt Schwind · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is well written and still useful in many ways. I think if it was 2015, I'd probably have given it 4 stars. As it stands, however, technology has the half-life of a banana so some of the information in 2020 reads a bit old and dated. Having said that, the broad strokes are all still spot on and it's a quick read. I'd have no problem recommending this book for others to read.

[Randall · Rating 4 out of 5]

While written with women in mind, this is a valuable privacy resource for everyone, particularly male developers who want to build applications and businesses with the privacy concerns of women in mind.

[Maeve · Rating 4 out of 5]

This guide offers very practical advice to securing your information online. While the intended audience is obviously women (per the title) the information is definitely applicable to all genders. I particularly appreciated the Resources chapter at the end of the book esp. the letter templates.

[Anders · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the kind of book I want my children to read when they get a bit older. The author knows what she is talking about and gives good advice and lots of tangible information.
You quickly get the picture even if you choose not to read the whole book.

[Joshua I. James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great overview of privacy things to think about on and offline. U.S. focused and not too technical. The resources section alone is worth it.

[Shanni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading for anyone online especially women!

[Michael Baumli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend this to all of my friends. A good resource for combating Creepy Steve

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is really helpful! I would love to see an updated version.