Personal data has great value on the web. Whenever we browse, our information could be exposed and third parties could use it for profit. We could also be victims of spoofing attacks and other derived problems. In this article we echo a new trick that is working for those who are constantly looking for a way to obtain personal information on the network.
New trick to get information from users
There are many methods you can use to this end. They are constantly looking for ways to collect personal data when browsing, using services and platforms on the Internet. Thus they could include us in spam campaigns, send targeted advertising or even sell it to third parties to obtain financial income.
However, users are increasingly alert on the Internet and make fewer mistakes. They do not trust that e-mail that they receive and that asks for data so much, they also distrust when installing programs by making sure that the source is legitimate, etc. But of course, the hackers, the attackers in short, also constantly perfect their techniques to achieve the goal.
In this case it is based rather on a new technique, a trick, with which they manage not to be so direct with the users and that they do not distrust so much. What does it consist of? Simply asking for the information they want to collect and trusting users to give it to them. It is something that affects both those who use mobile devices as well as computers.
Basically what they do is not ask questions or seek to obtain valuable personal data first. According to a group of researchers from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, if the attackers structure the questions correctly, they will have a greater probability of success. They achieve that, to a certain extent, users give that information without realizing it, since it is little by little.
Questions from lowest to highest relevance
This trick consists of requesting personal information from less important to more private . Thus, in ascending order, they do not cause such a great impact to users at first that they might refuse to give that data. This is used by both websites and applications. We can say that they first try to gain the trust of users little by little, to finally request more personal data that can be used against them, since they have more value.
They also indicate that websites can manipulate users and get them to put more personal data by dividing it into several pages. In this way, in a first they would ask for more generic data, which would not cause the rejection of visitors, while in the following pages they would already request more relevant and personal information.
In short, what they are looking for with this trick or technique is simply to go from less to more when requesting information from users. This way there is less risk that they will refuse to give this data and can achieve the final objective. This means that, logically, they can compromise the privacy of users on the network, something that is very important to protect.
As we can see, there is a lot of data that we can expose simply by browsing the Internet or using services and platforms. This makes it essential to take precautionary measures and protect our data. The objective is none other than to prevent them from ending up in the hands of third parties who may use it against us. We leave you an article with tips to maintain privacy on the Internet.
