Increasingly, identity theft is a fact of life. We might once have hoped to protect ourselves from hackers with airtight passwords and aggressive spam folders, and those are good ideas as far as they go. But the truth is, there are people out there -- a lot of them -- who treat stealing your identity as a full-time job.
One such company is a nameless firm located in Russia, which has a trove of over a billion internet passwords. Another set up a website full of live streams of hacked web cameras, showing everything from people's offices and lobbies to the feeds from baby monitors. Even purchases made in person are still logged by retailers like Target, who are famously vulnerable to hackers.
Adam Levin, a longtime consumer advocate and identity fraud expert, is your guide to this brave new world. By telling memorable stories and extracting the relevant lessons, he offers a strategy for dealing with these risks. You may not be able to prevent identity theft, but you certainly shouldn't wait until it happens to take action.
About the Author
Adam Levin is a consumer advocate with more than 30 years’ experience in personal finance, privacy, real estate and government service. A former director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, Levin is Chairman and founder of Identity Theft 911, Chairman and co-founder of Credit.com and serves as a spokesperson for both companies.
An expert on personal finance, credit, identity management, fraud and privacy, he writes a weekly column which appears on Huffington Post and ABCNews.com. He is a frequent guest on television, and has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business News, Good Morning America, Fox & Friends, CBS Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight and scores of radio stations throughout the country.
He lives in New York City with his wife and son.
Industry Reviews
"The real value of Levin's book, though, lies not in its diagnosis, alarming as it is, but in its practical advice on how to protect yourself. No one can make themselves completely safe, but much like burglars who target the most vulnerable house on the street, hackers will seek out those with the weakest online defenses. Levin has a wealth of suggestions for making yourself less vulnerable." --The Sunday Times (UK) "In this alarming book, Levin, a consumer advocate and founder of the consulting agency Identity Theft 911, warns about the prominent dangers of identity fraud in the increasingly digital world... [SWIPED is] a primer on the potential dangers and what's at stake." --Publishers Weekly "A real eye-opener ... rock-solid evidence on the rise of identity theft and multiple steps we can take to counteract an attack." --Kirkus Reviews "If you have a credit card, or money, or a car, or a house, or anything of value--if you have a job or a family or a name--you need to read this book." --Marc Weber Tobias, Security.org and Forbes contributor "Identity theft is becoming a fact of life--data breaches are growing at an alarming rate. In Swiped, Adam Levin shows you how to proactively minimize the risk of identity theft and protect your identity, by design. Don't leave it to chance (or to the Internet of Things)--follow Adam's sage advice!" --Ann Cavoukian, executive director, Privacy and Big Data Institute, Ryerson University, and former Information and Privacy Commissioner, Ontario, Canada "Identity theft is about so much more than credit card heists or hacked bank accounts today. A lot has happened since I wrote Your Evil Twin a decade ago. Now, ID theft is about having your face stolen, your friends stolen, your company, even your personality. In the twenty-first century, you are the 1s and 0s that make up your identity in the world's computers--your digital twin--and nearly all of us now have an evil twin. Swiped is an important update to the literature on privacy and identity-based crimes. If you want to keep up with your evil twin and all the new ways your identity can be used against your will, you should read this book." --Bob Sullivan, bestselling author of Stop Getting Ripped Off
