About the Author

A couple years ago, I decided that I wanted to uncover every electronic file that I could about myself. The experience was daunting but also instructive. I discovered information collection that noone had written about before. I discovered benefits that surprised me. I discovered problems that terrified me.

But most of all, I realized that most of the books I was using to help me with the project focused on privacy. And that privacy was a very narrow way to focus the discussion of how information collection (and the technology that drives it) impacts us all.

The real danger of information is the power it provides. And how it can be misused. Protection, much more than privacy, ought to be our biggest concern.

As corny as it sounds, I felt that people were being ill-served by the many books which paint a "Chicken Little" vision of privacy invasions. I wanted to present facts about the basic stuff that affects us everyday along with a set of tools to help each reader determine for himself what was important to him and where he might want to watch out.

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When not crusading for the cause of consumer empowerment, Amanda runs the research division of Antics Online, Inc., a Silicon Valley marketing agency. Before Antics, she co-founded garageband.com, an online music venture which uses the Internet community to test-market new music. She was the head of web research for Netscape Communications and Vice President of product development for Digital Pictures, a crusading developer of full motion video video-games.

Amanda's journey of understanding and using the way people process information began with the Ph.D. in linguistics she earned from Harvard University.

Her literary agent is Ted Weinstein Literary Management.