Steal This Computer Book

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback
• ISBN 10 Number: 1886411212
• ASIN: B00005R09U

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Steal This Computer Book 4.0: What They Won't Tell You About the Internet (Paperback) This is one of those books that never quite turns out as good as I hoped it would be... Steal This Computer Book 4.0 : What They Won't Tell You About the Internet by Wallace Wang. It tries to cover a lot of ground, and as a result it's not as focused as it should be... Contents: Part 1 - The Early Hackers: The Hacker Mentality; The First Hackers - The Phone Phreakers; Hacking People, Places, and Things Part 2 - The PC Pioneers: ASNI Bombs and Viruses; Trojan Horses and Worms; Warez (Software Piracy) Part 3 - The Internet Hackers: Where The Hackers Are; Stalking A Computer; Cracking Passwords; Digging Into A Computer With Rootkits; Censoring Information; The Filesharing Networks Part 4 - The Real World Hackers: The Internet Con Artists; Finding People On The Internet; Propaganda As News and Entertainment; Hacktivism - Online Activism; Hate Groups and Terrorists on the Internet Part 5 - The Future - Hacking For Profit: Identity Theft and Spam; Banner Ads, Pop-Up Ads, and Search Engine Spamming; Adware and Spyware Part 6 - Protecting Your Computer and Yourself: Computing On A Shoestring - Getting Stuff For (Almost) Free; Computer Forensics - The Art Of Deleting and Retrieving Data; Locking Down Your Computer Epilogue; What's On The Steal This Computer Book 4.0 CD; Index This book has been around for quite a long time, and it's gone through a number of revisions (the 4.0 in the title). The earliest reviews of this book are from mid-1998, and in some areas it looks like the book has never been updated. Part of that is the historical nature of the material he's covering, and I'm sure there's a number of readers trying to figure out what MS-DOS is. The central theme of the book is "hacking", but there are areas where he strays into areas that I've not traditionally put in that category. Getting free stuff like email accounts and blogs? Censoring information? Hate groups? Even in the areas that I *do* consider more "hack-like", like file-sharing networks, he leaves out any mention of BitTorrent. Granted, there's a reference to the Steal This File Sharing Book, but still... It just seems that the information is a bit eclectic and rather "hit or miss" at times. But even having said that, there is a guilty pleasure in reading this book. It's similar to reading about the seamy underbelly of your local city... you know it's there, you don't condone it, but you have a hard time averting your eyes when you drive by. And there are some things that I didn't know... like services that will email you requested web pages so as to avoid http logging. So... I don't know that you'll get a lot out of it if you've been around computers for any length of time. It's still a fun read, and you can scan the areas that don't quite hold your interest... Comment | | (Report this)