Chris Hadnagy - Human Hacking, book review

In a nutshell (288 pages), this is an instruction manual for how to “hack” people to get what you want. We’ve all heard of internet, online, or software hackers. Hadnagy proposes that people can be scrutinized (the way hackers scrutinize code) to find weaknesses in them to open them up and gain access to what we want.

What I got out of it

There is a lot of good information and tools, mostly about identifying personality types vs what will work to convince the given person. Hadnagy also gives tools and recommendations to avoid being the target of a “social Hacker”. There are a lot of insights that are valuable and worth learning.

What was difficult

While the author clearly likes acronyms, he doesn’t seem to know how they work. What Hadnagy has to teach, while valuable, could easily be shortened to a bulletin. Hadnagy tends to be repetitive and with his weak writing skills it gets old. Also, he has a huge complex in being perceived as being possibly untrustworthy. He begins the book with a letter he wants his reader to sign and commit to doing no evil. He then continuously tells stories about doing unethical things, but always for a reason and with a weak explanation. The reasoning is not always “because I was hired to do it.”

Recommendation

Rather than committing your time and money to the book either find a summary or listen to a few of his interviews, mostly available on podcasts. A summary is probably best because it will, if well written, clearly outline the principles he has to teach. And the principles he has to teach are important. They just don’t take over 250 pages to explain.