What personal information are you sharing through social media quizzes?
With the recent Cambridge Analytica data breach that obtained personal information from more than 50 million Facebook users, are you being careful about what you put out and do online?
Have you ever scrolled through Facebook and saw a quiz about what fruit best matches your personality? It might seem innocent enough, but clicking on that link could actually have you give out more personal info than you thought.
“One thing that we learned with these Facebook quizzes is that this is a hackers real way to get to you and what they’re doing is that they’re luring you into these quizzes and they’re getting information into your personal information,” Jeremy Johnson, The Eastern Idaho Marketplace Manager of the Better Business Bureau, said. “They’re also getting your friends information and who you’re friends with.”
What some of these hackers do is send whatever quiz you just took to your friends so then that they take the quiz and then steal their information as well.
“A lot of these quizzes have hidden links and they’re linking you to unsecured site which are allowing the hackers to get into your information,” explained Johnson.
Believe it or not these hackers aren’t interested in your quiz answers, but your personal information that can mean business for them.
“They’re trying to learn more about you to feed you information,” Johnson said. “To possibly insinuate things or help you buy things or a variety of different things maybe influence you politically.”
The BBB says not all social media quizzes are bad, but they do have tips to help you avoid the scams.
Be skeptical: Before you take a quiz, figure out who created it. Is it a brand you trust? Adjust privacy settings: Review your social media account’s privacy settings and be strict about what information you share. Remove personal details from your profile: Don’t share information like your phone number or home address on social media accounts. Don’t accept friend requests from people you don’t know.
There is a lot of information out there and people can get access to it. It’s up to you to protect yourself.
If you’re a Facebook user who takes quizzes and uses third-party apps, you can check what kind of information the apps are collecting about you by going to settings, then apps.
