Book Review: Cyber Spying - Tracking Secret Online Lives

I finally have found it. A book that, in my opinion, should never have been published. At least it should not have been put out by a technical publishing house. Or it should have had a different title or target audience. Yes, Cyber Spying: Tracking Your Family's (Sometimes) Secret Online Lives (Ted Fair, Michael Nordfely et al et al, Syngress Press, 2005, 439 Pages, US$39.95 List/US$26.37 Amazon) is that kind of book. But what is it about this book that set me off and colored my view before I even  got past the first chapter?

For starters, the authors start out by sensationalizing online behaviour, doing so by putting in internet chat and web site transcripts laced with sexual content and obscenities. This is totally unnecessary and they could have made their points without this. For this reader, this is hard to overlook. They make a slight recovery in the second chapter with a discussion of spuing basics, making distinctions between overt and covert spying, when to use the different styles, and the impact overt spying on behaviour as the result of social engineering.

After this, it all starts to go downhill. They spend two lengthy chapters on computer basics and networking basics, offering too much content that is superfluous at best. If this was truly a book for the masses put out by a mainstream publisher, perhaps it may have been appropriate, but not in the direction the book heads in from this point.

I did learn a couple of new things I did not know about, like the Internet Explorer hidden "Super cache" that most people do not know to clear, but that was about it. For the average person that wants to know about how to check up on their family on-line behaviour, there is no need for the extensive discussion of Ethereal how to use it, and how to analyze the results. Most nontechnical people do not need to know how to read SMTP packet streams or how to install a secret server. This is just way over the top for the target audience of the book.

Finally, there is no worse offense than referencing information without providing a reference, footnote or other citation. The authors are guilty of this in at least one case in this book. In fact, they do not provide citations for any of their quoted case studies or anecdotes, which puts huge strains on the credibility of the information presented.

The Business Controls Caddy Scorecard

For those familiar with golf terminology, the authors scored a snowman on this par 4 (that means they would have shot an 8 (quadruple bogey). If the book had a different title or a different target audience, the review would be different. But it is not...