Far from being simple entertainment, video games continue to carve out an ever-increasing space in the habits of Italians. Millions of people use these products on every platform, with numbers constantly increasing. But not everyone knows the risks of this activity.
There are many Italians who play video games. Lots of them. According to the latest estimates, in our country there would be approximately 13 million gamersif we count all the available devices: almost one in three Italians in the 6 – 64 age group, with males outnumbering their “female colleagues” by about one and a half times (8 million versus 4.9).
However, the number of gamers may be growing at a faster rate than the number of users who are aware of the risks of gaming. Usually unaware of the strategies used by Internet robbers, many users do not consider it necessary to take any countermeasures, such as securing their connection or hiding their IP address.
Protecting our security online
If you are thinking right now, “Why on earth should I hide my ip address?”, you should know that gamers are not immune to threats that can affect any web user, especially those who spend a lot of time online.
- Viruses and Malware. Do you often download files to play games? If so, you run the risk of having some unwelcome guests such as viruses and malware, which once they make their way onto your device, could transmit sensitive information to third parties, putting you in a vulnerable position.
- Account theft. If you have shared credentials for multiple accounts, anyone who gets hold of them could access multiple of your profiles and do whatever they want. And the risk increases if your passwords are vulnerable.
- Identity theft. Another aspect to pay close attention to is the amount of personal information shared with other gamers during gaming sessions. Do you talk about yourself a lot? Do you usually click on links sent by users in chat? This could make you vulnerable to a practice called phishing, aimed at collecting information about your identity.
How to protect yourself?
Faced with such a mass of threats, it is useful to ask ourselves what we can do to protect our privacy and the sensitive data that could be stolen when we surf the Internet.
Some countermeasures may be intuitive, such as setting more complex passwords and preferably different ones for the various profiles, install a good antivirus and limit the amount of information provided to other users.
For those who want to take an additional measure to protect their privacy, there are specific tools available such as VPNs.
Known to most by their acronym, Virtual Private Networks are private networks that can be used to protect online activity, thanks to end-to-end encryption that shields browsing from third-party attacks, safeguarding sensitive information.
Typically used to bypass geolocation restrictions and access restricted content, VPNs mask your IP address by passing the connection through one of the company’s own servers. This way, anyone who manages to discover the address associated with your connection would only find a server of your choice, and not the one that links to your real location.
VPNs are affordable, usually no more than a few euros per month. If you want to evaluate the solidity of the service before signing up for a subscription, you can use the free trial period to use a VPN without having to pay, and then decide whether to make a definitive upgrade to your security.
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