How many times has it happened to us to connect to any web page on the Internet and, before starting navigation, the writing “We care about your privacy” followed by the description of what happens if we click on “accept” or “customize” which explains what that operation is for. These are the cookies“device identifiers or similar online identifiers” That “can be stored or read by the user's device to recognize it every time the user connects to an app or website” to have “personalized advertising and content, content and ad performance measurement, audience research, service development; Precise geolocation data and identification through device scanning”.
The world ranking
Thanks to cookies, the trace of our tastes and preferences remains online: this is why all this information is tempting hackers who literally go to steal this information as demonstrated by the investigation carried out by NordVPN analysts for Republic with thrilling numbers: approx 54 billion they are the ones stolen all over the world by cybercriminals, more than 450 million only in our country. It's impressive to read that just about Googlethe most used search engine, over two billion cookies have been stolen by hackers: in second place is YouTube (more than 692 million), third position for Microsoft (over 658 million cookies). Amazon, Linkedin and Facebook also appear in the top ten to name some of the most used platforms at risk of theft by cyber criminals. As far as individual countries are concerned, analysts have seen that it is the Brazil the nation where the most are stolen, over two billion, followed by India and Indonesia. Alas, theItaly is in 19th position with the theft of over 456 million cookies.
Because hackers care
In detail, however, why are cookies so important for cybercriminals? “If a hacker gets hold of our active cookies, they may not need to know their username, password, or multi-factor authentication to take control of our accounts.”, Adrianus Warmenhoven, cybersecurity consultant at NordVPN, clarified to the newspaper. Here, for example, once we enter a reserved area with a password, we have a cookie assigned by default which, every time we return to that page, “recognizes” us and does not require us to carry out the procedure again. In this way, if we are faced with an active cookie, hackers could easily enter our account with serious damage to our privacy.
The most searched cookies
NordVPN experts have made it known that over 10 billion cookies stolen concern those for general identification, in second place are those used for network communications to identify a session, a series of related message exchanges. Just behind, with tens of millions of thefts, we arrive at cookies that are used for identification and login. “If you combine all these details together with age, size, gender and sexual orientation, you can draw a very intimate picture of the user, perfect for launching well-structured offensives or scams”, Warmenhoven emphasized.
How to defend yourself
While there is no 100% secure method to prevent a hacker from stealing this sensitive data, expert advice involves systematically deleting cookies so they can be kept to a minimum.”data that could be stolen“.
Ad hoc programs can help block bad guys, which is why it would be good to have a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to increase the level of security when browsing the web.