TANGLED WEB: Tales of Digital Crime from the Shadows of Cyberspace

I just finished reading Tangled Web by Richard Power. I thoroughly enjoyed most of it. He presents a very technical, a possibly boring subject in a very realistic and easy-to-read light. Many cyber-crime books either blow the topic way out of proportion and pander to the uneducated and gullible. They would have the same sort of audience that stocked up on supplies in the waning days of 1999 waiting for the Y2K bug to end the world. Powers does not do that. Nor does he play the issue down as some have. His information is backed by statistics, mostly presented in easy-to-read summary charts and tables. He prefaces the discussions of the various aspects of crimes with anecdotes that draw you into the topic, making you want to learn more. Overall, it is a very accurate, informative, and fun read. My primary two concerns with the book that kept me from the 5-star rating are (1) The chapters are long winded. (2) Some of the information is outdated. I wish that the author would have cut every section down in size by about 25%. Remember high school, when the teacher assigned a 5-page essay but you only had 4 pages of information? I don't know what the cause is, but this seems to be what Power did for many of the chapters. It takes away from the readability, but not significantly enough for me to suggest against this book. Simply due to the rapidly changing environment of networking, computer technology, and the internet, this book is necessarily mildly outdated, since it was written in 2000. However, this problem is not great. This is not a technical "how to stop cybercrime" book. It is more of an overview of what cybercrime is, what it can look like, and what it isn't. Therefore, even if the nuances of the crimes or the nuances of the preventions have changed, the bird's-eye view of them has changed very little. This also should not keep you from this book. If you are interested in the subject buy this book. Now that so many copies are available so inexpensively by purchasing used, there is nothing to keep from reading this.