It’s all fun and games until someone gets their identity stolen.
Did you know that participating in interactive Facebook memes and quizzes could actually put your identity at risk?
How, you might ask?
Let’s take the recent 10 Concerts meme that’s been going on the past few weeks. It asks users to list 10 shows, including nine you actually attended and one that’s a lie. Friends are then supposed to guess the lie. Which leads us to our first reason:
- The “quiz” could actually be a trick to get people to share the answer to a common security question. In this case, the security question is likely some variation of “What was the first concert you attended?”
Digital analyst Brian Solis was interviewed for this Telegraph story:
“When live shows are added to other information from a user’s profile, hackers can then approximate age, interests, religion to gain access to everything from your password to your financial information and more,” Solis said.
In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a security expert who will take part in a social network quiz. Why? This leads us to our second reason …
- Many quizzes allow companies to mine and store all of your personal data, which they could then sell to third parties.
Remember the Facebook quiz that unearthed your most used words in a clever cloud graphic you could then post on your wall? How many people actually read the privacy policy before agreeing? It’s hard to know for sure, but if you had, you might not have been so quick to click accept.
A 2015 Comparitech story highlighted the dangers of giving “up almost every private detail about themselves to a company they likely know nothing about.”
To take part in the quiz you had to visit an app via Facebook, and you had to agree to their seriously overreaching privacy policy. Clicking yes allowed Vonvon.me, the company who created the quiz, access to a ton of private information, including:
- Name, profile picture, age, sex, birthday, and other public info
- Entire friend list
- Everything you’ve ever posted on your timeline
- All of your photos and photos you’re tagged in
- Education history
- Hometown and current city
- Everything you’ve ever liked
- IP address
- Info about the device you’re using, including browser and language
At the time, writer Paul Bischoff had singled out Vonvon because it was one of their quizzes that had gone viral, but really you really should not take part in any online quizzes. And if you’re really tempted, take the time to check the permissions and read the privacy policy or terms of use first.
“Facebook is full of shady data dealers to masquerade behind viral quiz mills. Facebook is a haven for a large number of such companies and, frankly, hasn’t done enough to educate or warn users about the risks,” Bischoff warns.
This BBC story brings up another consideration when it comes to installing these apps — which you might not even realize you did. But the apps “continue running in the background unless users actively delete them via their privacy settings. That could potentially mean that the apps are collecting Facebook data long after users have forgotten the quiz they agreed to take part in.”
Concerned? In Facebook, go into Settings and then Apps to see which Apps you’re logged into with Facebook. Click the pencil next to the icon and then at the very bottom of the pop-up you’ll see “Remove App” as one of the options.
And the third and final reason has nothing to do with online security at all, really.
- No one actually cares what concerts you’ve seen.
This kind of falls into that humble brag category of Facebook post that’s so annoying. Do yourself and your friends a favor, skip the quizzes/memes and stick to posting photos of cuddly kittens.
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Image: Pixabay
