Your Secrets Are My Business:Security Expert Reveals How your Trash License Plate Credit Cards computer Even your mail make you a target

By Kevin McKeown with Dave Stern



If you weren’t paranoid about the lack of control over the information generated by your life before reading this book, you will be afterwards. I found this one in Newark Airport. It’s an informative, quick read that is a combination of the author’s stories as a P. I. mixed with hints and suggestions to make your life more secure. Plus it has a really long subtitle which MUST mean that it’s a good book.

The book is an interesting one. It covers your life from a few different aspects. Your trash (not yours once you throw it away), your car, credit cards, computers and mail. If it is on the internet it is not private and can probably never be taken away. Even shredded paper can be reassembled, it just depends on the motivation of the person reconstructing the page. Cross-cut shredders? Good but not perfect. McKeown suggests throwing your shredded papers away in thirds at different locations. Or better yet, soak the paper in bleach and water. He offers interesting suggestions on how the government and businesses could make things more secure, simply. But as he tells us, the post office alone makes millions by selling the list of address change notices to private companies so odds are most of his suggestions will never be taken up.

I guess my Dad was on the right track. He always asks why when asked for any information and isn’t afraid to say NO.