NSA uses Google Web browser cookies for targeted hacks - WRCBtv.com | Chattanooga News, Weather & Sports

By Andrew Couts
Provided by

Think all of those advertising cookies installed on your browser are being used by the government to track people and hack into their computers? You're not paranoid – you're right.

From the latest revelation from the Edward Snowden leaked document cache, the Washington Post reports that the National Security Agency and its sister spy organization in the UK, GCHQ, uses Google Web cookies to identify specific users who are then hit with hacking software.

Google's so-called PREF cookie, which is used to "help personalize ads," according to the company, and for saving user preferences, like default language, is installed on Web users' computers when they use the company's various online services, like Search or Maps. Information collected by the cookie does not include personally identifiable information, like names, but it does generate a unique number, called Google PREFID, that's linked to a specific Web browser.

The NSA is, according to the Washington Post, able to use this number to identify the computer of people it has already pinpointed as someone of interest. It is not clear how the NSA is able to link a PREFID to a specific person, though it may be able to obtain this information through a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) order. According to the leaked documents, the agency does not use Google cookies to monitor Web activity on a broad scale, nor is it hacking into every Web user's computers.

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

Content provided by