🔒 Firewall Years

Locked Down — Updates

Locked Down gets revised as new scam tactics emerge. This page tracks what's changed and when, including anything not yet folded into the current Kindle edition.

Locked Down: A Cybersecurity Engineer's Guide to Protecting Your Money and Identity in Retirement — by Gil Martino, first edition.
Sep 2026
Revised

Travel security added, cover refreshed

A full new section on protecting yourself while traveling, plus an updated cover reflecting the expanded edition.

New content

  • The pre-trip digital lockdown checklist — accounts, devices, and alerts to set before you leave
  • Public Wi-Fi and hotel network risk, and when to use a VPN or your phone's cellular connection instead
  • Booking and excursion scams — fake rental listings, fake airline "customer service" numbers, and high-pressure timeshare pitches
  • Hotel-room and front-desk impersonation scams, including the fake "confirm your card number" call
  • Money on the road and coming home — ATM tampering, and what to check on your first day back

Also updated

  • Cover refreshed to reflect the expanded edition
Sep 2026
Revised

Update batch: new scam patterns

Seven new sections and several smaller additions, prompted by scams reported directly to the author in the weeks before this update.

New sections

  • Medicare Open Enrollment impersonation scams (Ch. 2)
  • Toll-payment text scams — E-ZPass, SunPass, FasTrak, and similar (Ch. 3)
  • The traffic-violation QR-code text scam (Ch. 3)
  • Door-to-door solicitors, storm-chasing contractors, and fake utility inspectors (Ch. 5)
  • Verifying data-breach notification letters before enrolling in credit monitoring, including a real walkthrough (Ch. 6)
  • Large-transaction bank alerts to a trusted adult child (Ch. 8)

Also added

  • A real, working QR code image, so readers can see what one actually looks like
  • A daytime call-timing note and a workplace-verification tip for family-impersonation calls
  • A real, anonymized near-miss example of the grandparent scam
  • Resolution of the family safe word update first raised in Chapter 7

Earlier revisions aren't listed — this page starts with the first edition's initial update batch.

Have a scam story or a correction to report?

It may end up informing the next update. Use the form below, or email tips@firewallyears.com directly — handy if you want to forward a suspicious text or email as-is.

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