Is It Safe? Protecting Your Computer, Your Business, and Yourself Online
Author: Michael Miller
Pages: 384
Publisher: Que
ISBN: 0789737825
Introduction
When you’re working in the IT field, especially with computer security, you are definitely flagged by your family and friends as the person who knows it all and needs to always be there for tech support. We have heard countless questions about a sneaky virus that infected aunt’s business PC, strange e-mails from a guy from Nigeria our cousin never heard of… The list is endless, especially with all the phishing and identity theft attempts that are circulating on a daily basis.
Miller’s book “Is It Safe?” comes as a true savior for educating new Internet users. The book provides answers to practically all the questions you, as the family “tech support”, will regularly receive. Now you can spend a couple of bucks and send them this information packed book that will teach them all the necessary stuff they need to know about online safety.
About the author
Michael Miller is a successful and prolific author. He has written more than 80 nonfiction books over the past two decades, with more than a million copies in print. His books for Que include “Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Computer Basics”, “How Microsoft Windows Vista Works”, “Your First Notebook PC” and others.
Inside the book
As you could read from my short introduction this book is aimed at a majority of regular computer users that are being online primarily in order to check their email, connect with friends over one of the popular social networking sites and browse around the Web. Albeit a number of this type of users now some relatively basic online security concepts, this book is a perfect reading material to make them understand what are the biggest problems facing regular Internet Joes. Of course, with understanding the possible problems, the author will teach the readers how to prevent them, as well as how to recuperate and react if they were the target of an attack.
“Is It Safe?” has a concept where the content is presented in a number of sections based on specific online threats. The book spreads on about 300 pages and is very well constructed. With every topic Mr. Miller provides the readers with a good understanding of the issue and accompanies it with an occasional screenshot, as well as a set of notes, tips and caution alerts. There is one more thing I liked about it – in a number of cases author shares his own personal experience which will often relate to at least a similar situation that a reader came across. Just to follow-up on the screenshots I mentioned – from my perspective the author should have provided much more images – novice users are always craving for something visual to better relate to the topic in question.
To cut the story short, you are probably wondering what issues does the book focus on. There are 24 topics concentrated in seven sections: identity theft, data theft, online fraud, e-mail spam and scams, online surveillance, computer viruses and surveillance and last but not least full set of tips on protecting against hacks and attacks.
Final thoughts
With the evolving world of the Internet, malicious activities are elevating rapidly. Majority of the attacks are targeting novice users, those who are not educated about the basic online security principles. Miller’s “Is It Safe?” comes to the rescue as a perfect reading material for any computer user who wants to take online safety in his own hands.