Founder, DFend + Cybersecurity Pundit + Digital Identity & Privacy Strategist + Award-Winning Author …who had his life stolen as a digital identity theft target.
Chris Smith—like millions of others—met someone new and was in the process of planning the next steps of his life.
What he didn’t plan for was becoming a target of a sophisticated international identity theft ring.
Privacy Pandemic is both the story of Chris’s fight against the fraudsters who tried to steal his life & a guide for readers on how to stay safe in a dangerous digital world.
About Chris
An established leader with 20+ years of experience in digital identity, digital media, and SaaS, Chris knows firsthand what it is like to experience significant digital identity theft.
A tech-savvy strategist in digital media and emerging technologies, Christopher A. Smith has garnered an unparalleled reputation for launching, redeveloping, and building highly successful companies with records that consistently reflect double-digit growth. His expertise includes creating strategic global partnerships, defining go-to-market strategies, galvanizing sales, spurring product development, and leading global teams within both start-ups and global organizations.
While an executive at a cryptocurrency firm, Chris became the target of significant and life-altering digital identity theft. Fueled by this experience, Chris founded DFend—a next-generation security service for developers, enterprise security professionals, and consumers to protect their digital assets and identities. Chris’s passion and purpose is to make the digital world a safer place, reducing others’ risk of becoming victims of similar crimes. This is his driving force when defending companies and consumers with disruptive technology. Chris was born and raised in San Mateo, California, and resides in New York City. Privacy Pandemic is his first book and documents his personal experience with digital fraud.
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About Privacy Pandemic
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After mounting red flags caused him to end a relationship, Chris soon found his digital life under attack: his accounts were compromised, emails and texts were intercepted, Social Security number was stolen—they even hacked his mother’s home WiFi router.
Chris would soon learn cybercriminals had targeted him in one of the most extensive, twisted cases of digital identity theft known by experts. But unfortunately, he also discovered that he’s not alone but rather is another casualty in an Information Age plague that threatens the finances and digital safety of individuals, companies, and governments worldwide.
Privacy Pandemic is the story of Chris’s fight against the fraudsters who tried to steal his life—and who continue to attack him to this day.
Once he recovered from the shock and betrayal, he vowed to bring his attackers to justice and assembled a team of experts in the US and abroad—attorneys, digital forensics specialists, and law enforcement agents—and began relentlessly building an active case.
But this is about more than Chris’s story. It’s about everyone’s story.
As Chris discovered when he tried to hold his attackers accountable, keeping vital personal information safe in the digital age is incredibly difficult.
Privacy Pandemic is not only a firsthand account of what happens when one is targeted by sophisticated cybercriminals—it’s also a guide for readers on how to stay safe in a dangerous digital world. Chris details the companies, software, tools, and practices that give us all the best chance of preventing security breaches and their disastrous consequences.
He shares how he’s turned personal loss and hardship into professional triumph, ensuring that the power to protect personal information as much as possible is where it belongs: in the hands of consumers.
About DFend
DFend’s mission is to provide proactive tools for organizations and their users to identify cyber threats in real time. Our SaaS platform provides organizations, and consumers with early-warning signals, automated recommendations, and security policies to stop cybercrime and identity theft. We believe digital security should be easy to use, implement, and deploy at scale for all users.
Blog
According to NIST, did you know that over 95% of organizations allowed the use of personal devices for work even before the pandemic?
And that mobile phishing attacks have risen by 161% in recent years? (Lookout)
Yet, despite these risks, a majority of companies still lack robust cybersecurity education and policies for ... read more
AI is transforming cybersecurity, reshaping both the threat landscape and defense strategies for companies, and consumers.
However, it is estimated that only 10% of companies have integrated AI into their cybersecurity systems, exposing many to increasingly sophisticated, AI-driven cyberattacks.
Here’s the problem: Cybercriminals are outpacing AI companies’ use of targeted attacks.
For example, ... read more
Did you know that only an estimated 10% of U.S. consumers*—a mere 34 million out of the 346 million of us—have taken the simple step of freezing their credit files?
That’s a powerful statistic, highlighting just how many people remain vulnerable to cybercrime and identity theft. Having experienced a targeted attack ... read more
Biometric data—fingerprints, facial scans, and even voice prints—are often considered the most secure form of identification.
However…
Recent breaches highlight a concerning vulnerability. Millions of users were potentially exposed to high-profile breaches like the incident (October 2023).
Hackers used credential-stuffing attacks to access sensitive genetic profiles, raising concerns ... read more
The rise of deepfake technology is reshaping how we perceive digital content—and not in a good way.
AI advancements have made it easier than ever to create hyper-realistic deepfakes, blending fabricated audio and video with real voices and faces. What once took months to create can now be done in hours.
Deepfakes ... read more
Media
Chris is available for interviews, features, and speaking engagements. Contact us below.
In an interview, Chris can speak on the following topics and more.
- Protecting consumers against data breaches
- The current state of crypto, digital identity, and Web3
- The future of AI & cybersecurity
- His personal experience with identity theft
Contact
Contacts:
Press: Madison Kendrick at 42West 
Management: Stevie Boothe at The Boothe Group
Publisher: Amplify Publishing Group