// Comparison
Anonymat sur Internet vs Pegasus: Which Should You Read?
Two cybersecurity books on Privacy, compared honestly: who each is for, what each does best, and which to read first.
A practical French guide to online anonymity and privacy — proxies, VPNs, Tor, secure messaging and mobile — by a Le Monde cybersecurity journalist (later one of the Pegasus reporters).
How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy
Laurent Richard, Sandrine Rigaud
The inside story of the Forbidden Stories investigation into NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, told by the journalists who ran it. The best narrative account of what commercial zero-click surveillance actually does to its targets.
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Key takeaways
- A clear, practical French primer on online anonymity for ordinary users.
- Written by Untersinger (Le Monde), later a Pegasus revelations reporter — credible and grounded.
- From 2014: the principles hold (Tor, VPNs, messaging), but verify specific tools against current advice.
- Zero-click exploitation removes the user from the security model entirely; there is no link not to tap and no mistake to avoid.
- A commercial vendor selling to governments launders state surveillance through a layer of plausible deniability that NSO exploits relentlessly.
- The targets were not just terrorists and criminals as advertised, but journalists, lawyers, activists, and heads of state.
How they compare
We rate Pegasus higher (4/5 against 3/5 for Anonymat sur Internet). For most readers, that means Pegasus is the primary pick and Anonymat sur Internet is a useful follow-up.
Both books target beginner-level readers, so the choice is about topic, not difficulty.
Anonymat sur Internet and Pegasus both cover Privacy, so reading them in sequence reinforces the same material from different angles.