You: For Sale: Protecting Your Personal Data and Privacy Online

Everything we do online, and increasingly in the real world, is tracked, logged, analyzed, and often packaged and sold on to the highest bidder. Every time you visit a website, use a credit card, drive on the freeway, or go past a CCTV camera, you are logged and tracked. Every day billions of people choose to share their details on social media, which are then sold to advertisers.

The Edward Snowden revelations that governments - including those of the US and UK – have been snooping on their citizens, have rocked the world. But nobody seems to realize that this has already been happening for years, with firms such as Google capturing everything you type into a browser and selling it to the highest bidder. Apps take information about where you go, and your contact book details, harvest them and sell them on – and people just click the EULA without caring. No one is revealing the dirty secret that is the tech firms harvesting customers’ personal data and selling it for vast profits – and people are totally unaware of the dangers.

You: For Sale is for anyone who is concerned about what corporate and government invasion of privacy means now and down the road. The book sets the scene by spelling out exactly what most users of the Internet and smart phones are exposing themselves to via commonly used sites and apps such as Facebook and Google, and then tells you what you can do to protect yourself. The book also covers legal and government issues as well as future trends.

With interviews of leading security experts, black market data traders, law enforcement and privacy groups, You: For Sale will help you view your personal data in a new light, and understand both its value, and its danger.

• Provides a clear picture of how companies and governments harvest and use personal data every time someone logs on
• Describes exactly what these firms do with the data once they have it – and what you can do to stop it
• Learn about the dangers of unwittingly releasing private data to tech firms, including interviews with top security experts, black market data traders, law enforcement and privacy groups
• Understand the legal information and future trends that make this one of the most important issues today

About the Author

Stuart Sumner is a journalist, writer and broadcaster. He has written for and edited a number of both business and consumer titles, and specialises in technology, security, privacy and the law.

He has a bachelor’s degree in law, but escaped a legal career for the glamour of sitting alone in a darkened room, typing.

Stuart is an experienced speaker and events chairman, and has presented hundreds of live and recorded television broadcasts. He is also a regular technology pundit on BBC News.