Which Harry Potter character are you? Which Disney Princess are you? What cat is best suited to you? Which country best reflects your personality? Your Facebook feed may be filled with dozens of cute quizzes and surveys such as this. They can be fun, but answering those seemingly innocuous surveys and online questionnaires can also lead to big security issues for you and your friends.
Giving an app access to your Facebook profile can allow the app to harvest your personal information. What is even more shocking is that you may also be giving them access to personal information from your friends. Before accepting an app, read the privacy policy carefully to understand exactly what you are allowing the app to do, and what data they may access.
Cambridge Analytica made use of a personality quiz called “thisismydigitallife” that required participants to give access not only to their profile data but the profile data of all their Facebook friends as well. Although only 270,000 Facebook users chose to take the quiz, 50 million people had their personal info sent to Cambridge Analytica, most of whom hadn’t taken the test. According to Facebook, this was not a breach of its service.
Those “let’s get to know each other” status updates on Facebook may not give access to your profile, but they make your private information public. You may notice that some of the questions frequently asked in this quizzes are familiar: What was the name of your first pet? What street did you live on in second grade? What is the name of your favorite movie? These are typical questions used to verify your identity when recovering a password.
Security expert Brian Krebs is opposed to using security questions where the answers can be learned with a simple web search (e.g., What is your mother’s maiden name?) or are often disclosed in surveys and quizzes (e.g., What was the name of your first pet?). He suggests that if you are forced to supply answers to security questions such as these, that you provide fake answers. Of course, you need to be able to remember your phony answers in case you need them to validate your account at some time in the future.
Digital expert Kim Komando adds that there are six pieces of information you should never share on Facebook:
- Your telephone number
- Your home address
- Anything work related
- Your relationship status
- Your birthday
- Your payment information
