Smart devices and personalized advertising collect a huge amount of data about users. Many people think that these devices are watching people, using the information received not only to sell goods and services, but also to harm them. However, today the collection of information has become much more complex, experts say. Often, user carelessness leads to surveillance. We tell you how to protect your equipment from espionage.
All-Seeing Eye
Personalized advertising today knows the user well: his interests, preferences, plans and needs. Many believe that gadgets are watching us, collecting information through eavesdropping. But in reality, the process of data collection is much more complex.
It would probably be easier to assume that we are being listened to, but phones collect much more information about us than just our conversations. In order to understand who we are and what we are interested in, recording our speech is not necessary.
There are several methods for tracking user activity. In particular, data is collected through applications for mobile devices. Information can also be obtained from social networks, games and other services. They know the phone model, charge level, operating system, screen brightness, Wi-Fi connection and mobile operator. Based on this data, a unique device identifier is formed. This allows you to show personalized advertising.
This information is then made available to marketing specialists who create user profiles. Even the most simple game provides a huge amount of information that allows you to identify the user as a unique person.
In addition, data can be collected using cookie files, the expert added. They help track browsing history, scrolling duration, user interests and much more. All this information is accumulated and allows you to create a unique picture of a person.
Currently, most modern browsers provide users with protection against tracking cookies. But technologies do not stand still, and one of them allows you to create a kind of "fingerprint" of the browser, which can provide much more information about a person than cookie files.
Thanks to the browser snapshot, companies know what kind of computer a person has, what programs are installed on it, whether it has a charge, and so on.
The expert notes another popular area — monitoring via Wi-Fi.
Thanks to Wi-Fi, you can find out that two people are spending time together. And the social profile allows you to understand that they are in some kind of relationship.
Through social networks, you can determine a person's location by the marks on photos, links that he sends in messages, etc. Advertising that may be of interest to a user's friend will also appear in his feed.
The mechanism that helps determine that two people have similar interests is called look-alike, and with its help marketers today bring income to companies. Actually, all these huge aggregated data help marketers know much more about you than just a conversation near a smart speaker.
How to protect your equipment from surveillance?
In the modern world, there are still ways to protect yourself from such surveillance. For this, there are various privacy settings on mobile devices and computers, as Olga Sviridova notes.
Firstly, in the privacy and tracking settings, you can prohibit applications from collecting geolocation, access to photos and other information. On iOS, for example, the function of disabling tracking of third-party libraries has become popular in the last year. On Android, you can do the same by selecting the appropriate settings.
In both operating systems, you can disable personalized advertising. This does not mean that data about the user will stop being collected. But the device will no longer receive targeted ads.
Modern browsers often offer automatic protection by blocking tracking. However, they do not protect against data collection, which is now more popular than tracking groups.
The expert also said that you can protect yourself from tracking via Wi-Fi. To do this, you can configure a private MAC address on devices with Android and iOS.
With this function, the phone, each time scanning the Network, generates a new identifier that is sent to the device. And thereby, advertising companies that are engaged in aggregating such data will not be able to identify you.
Danger from where they did not expect
However, not only advertising companies use surveillance of devices. Hackers can also use the data obtained for their own purposes, warned Andrey Masalovich, CEO of Inforus. This can lead to physical damage and damage reputation. In addition, captured devices can be used to attack more serious targets. Such actions become part of cyber warfare.
Interestingly, different attacks on Internet of Things (IoT) devices use the same weaknesses. Most often, devices with a default password and the login "administrator" suffer. When working with Wi-Fi, they transmit unprotected login data to the network.
Even "smart" scales can "leak" data, the expert notes. Ordinary stoves are able to send SMS messages on behalf of the user. And a kettle or coffee maker can reveal the Wi-Fi password.
Those who create such devices do not understand the basics of cybersecurity. This is a systematic problem, because it is important for developers that the device turns on and works, and they do not know what needs to be checked.
AI for harm
Andrey Masalovich warns: with the development of artificial intelligence, the situation may become even more complicated. So far, neural networks cannot make it easier for people to perform everyday tasks. But they can already be used for harm.
The specialist predicted the emergence of various types of cyberattacks based on artificial intelligence, which will be widespread in the future. There are five such areas. And the first of these is attacks on voice assistants and smart devices.
You can create audio requests that mimic the human voice. This is possible thanks to modern technologies, including realistic deepfakes, which can be done quickly. The synthesized voice will pass any examination.
You can also collect typical commands that a person gave to the device and use them in the interests of the hacker. At the same time, audio signals are already being created today on the border of audible frequencies, which a person will not perceive as a voice message, but the device will.
There is also a possibility of attacks through industrial artificial intelligence systems. This can happen if attackers introduce malicious code into machine learning models in production, replacing telemetry data.
Cybersecurity experts have discovered a disturbing situation with mobile applications in Russia. Almost 30 thousand vulnerabilities were identified in popular programs. Over the past year, the number of critical threats has increased fourfold.
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