Privacy: only 6% of French people refuse all cookies

Accept cookies to save time knowing very well that we should be wary of them: this is the daily life of many French people.

Since 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has changed the rule for the setting of cookies by websites for European users. The goal was to give users control so that they would be able to opt out of being tracked by trackers. But it appears that this policy is a failure.

The French don’t want cookies… but accept them

According to a study conducted by NordVPN, only 6% of French people systematically refuse cookies from their web browsing. And they are almost half (46%) to always accept them.

However, users are wary of the possibility of being tracked by cookies. 67% of them feel that their online data is sold to companies, and 66% of the sample surveyed believe that this information is used for targeted advertising. In addition, 48% believe that their data is analyzed by sites to
their internal use, and 44% that they are used by cybercriminals for theft
identity or fraud.

Finally, many users accept cookies by default in order to save time, because the option to refuse all at once often requires two clicks.

How to protect against cookies

“ Cookies can track users’ online activity and provide partial identification of their identity […]. Cookies are also a source of vulnerability: if they are incorrectly configured or if you visit a malicious website, they can create security holes recalls Daniel Markuson, digital privacy expert at NordVPN.

He advises users to take the time to configure the cookies they accept and refuse when the banner appears, to regularly delete cookies from their browser and to activate the option to automatically block unnecessary cookies if their browser offers one. . Incognito mode can also be a way to get rid of it.

And, of course, Daniel Markuson preaches for his parish by urging users to use a VPN. If the very principle of the virtual private network in no way prevents the collection of data by cookies, NordVPN has included anti-threat protection in its suite for a few months, one of the roles of which is to block trackers.

Source: Press release