How to stay safe on the internet

Many of you heard of cookies and trackers. But what are they actually?

Trackers are scripts on websites that collect information about you like your preferences and how are you interacting with the site.

Trackers are used to recommend you new products to buy or to recommend you movies to watch. It is pretty useful when you are bored and you want to see a movie that you would 100% like.

Trackers are also bad when used by third-party companies, trackers can read your messages and some can even listen to you via your microphone. Later that data might be sold to other companies.

Cookies are just data that computer receives and sends back without changing it. It always consists of information.

Cookies are used to make webpages load faster, keep track of your visits to a website/activity. Cookies aren't always bad. They are mostly used for tracking users info that will be reused later, like items that user puts into a shopping cart. When they come back to the site they will still be there, its better for the user experience.

Bad side of cookies comes into the play when website stores your session into it. Hackers can hijack your cookies and just load them on their computer, it will be like they are using your account on your computer. They don't need to login or pass any 2fa because of the cookie site thinks you are already logged in.

How do I stay safe?

It is very easy, install some basic extensions to block trackers and clear your cookies when you are done using the computer.

I would recommend to use uBlock Origin. It is really easy to use paired with mozilla firefox browser, firefox has already built in tracker blockers. If you want to be extra safe you can use a VPN to protect your internet connection.