The digital identity, or digital fingerprint, is the set of elements that allow you to be recognized on the internet. Collected by malicious actors, they can be used to build your user profile, for fraudulent purposes, or to steal your identity. To avoid serious problems, it is essential to protect yourself.
Websites are more and more greedy in personal data and embed trackers that collect a phenomenal amount of information about their visitors. Of course, we have cookies, these small files stored by a server on the user’s device and which are automatically sent back to the source server during a new connection to the domain, which allow sites to collect a good number of information about your browsing habits and other aspects. In addition to these cookies, web players also analyze our digital fingerprints, which constitute our digital identity.
What digital footprints are you leaving behind?
When you browse the web, cookies and trackers collect a lot of data about you, even on sites that seem legitimate to you. There are two main families of digital fingerprints, which are very fond of website publishers, advertising agencies, and other web players with not always laudable intentions: browser fingerprints and device fingerprints.
A website is able to collect your browser fingerprints, which includes the browser you use, its update version, the screen resolution of the terminal from which you are connected, your time zone, your language settings , installed browser plugins, add-ons and extensions and their version, fonts installed on the device, your IP address and many other data.
Websites will also collect what are called device fingerprints, which provide more precise information on the hardware used: nature of the operating system (desktop or mobile) and version installed, processor model, amount of RAM, storage capacity, battery charge level if applicable, device IP and MAC addresses, network-related information, etc.
Why are your digital footprints important?
Using your digital fingerprints, web players will define your unique digital identity, which allows you to be recognized among all other users, even if you delete your cookies or change your IP address. Indeed, you are identifiable from the dozens, even hundreds, of data that you transmit during your navigation. On the planet, it is indeed very likely that your configuration has no similar: OS, technical sheet of your device, language spoken, browser version used, combination of extensions installed… your complete profile is unparalleled.
Thanks to all this data, websites know who you are, even if you don’t have an account on their platform. Your digital identity is used for advertising targeting, but can also be exploited for malicious purposes by hackers for fraud or identity theft operations. By knowing your system and your information, an actor can impersonate you with your bank, for example, and access your customer area and your accounts by escaping the security measures normally in force during a first connection from a new device, including two-factor authentication.
A few weeks ago, the FBI dismantled Genesis Market, an organization that sold digital fingerprints as well as impersonation kits to imitate the digital identity of victims. Browser cookies, saved logins, autofill form data: hackers provided everything needed to pretend to be the true owner of an account. But the damage is done, Genesis Market has already sold many of these kits, and other structures of this kind are ready to take over and threaten Internet users around the world anyway.
How to protect your digital identity?
According to Europol, “chances are your credentials have already ended up for sale on this criminal marketplace”. And hackers are becoming more and more inventive in stealing user IDs, cookies, fingerprints and metadata, which they use to circumvent security systems and multi-factor authentication mechanisms.
The European Criminal Police Agency recommends the use of anti-virus software on all its electronic devices in order to effectively protect against this type of threat. She also advises keeping your operating system, drivers, and software up-to-date to benefit from the latest security features.
Bitdefender offers all-in-one solutions offering comprehensive protection against malware and phishing, defending your digital identity, and including VPN and password manager, both on desktop and on smartphone or tablet. You therefore have access with a single subscription to all the safety and comfort features that make your daily life both simpler and safer.
Bitdefender Premium Security protects up to 10 Windows, macOS, iOS and Android devices. The offer includes the entire Total Security antivirus software suite as well as unlimited VPN to hide your IP address and use an encrypted connection and the handy password manager, which automatically generates strong passwords and fills in itself authentication forms for a quick and secure connection to its various accounts.
The Bitdefender Premium Security Plus formula goes even further by also integrating Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection. This solution lets you know if your data has been compromised and if your digital identity is at risk. It analyzes the web continuously and in real time in search of possible leaks of your personal data and monitors whether your accounts have been exposed. If this is the case, you are immediately notified by means of an alert, which allows you to take the necessary measures before it is too late: change of password and identifier, reinforcement of the security, implementation of two-factor authentication… Thanks to the Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection dashboard, you have an overview of all your digital fingerprints recorded on the web as well as data leaks of which you are the object.
This article is a publication sponsored by Bitdefender.
