Be Skeptical of Facebook Quizzes
Facebook has been in the spotlight recently with the news that Cambridge Analytica, and potentially many other companies, have been collecting and storing large amounts of your personal data. Some of the data in question comes from your Facebook profile, like your name, email, phone number, likes, and posts. Other data comes from the quizzes and polls that you take.Even the most seemingly harmless quizzes might have hidden intentions. Answering questions about your favorite band or your first pet are security concerns since they are common password recovery questions for your email or online bank account. Even more sinister, some quizzes are used to create psychological profiles on you in order to serve up targeted advertising that would impact you the most.One quiz itself might not pull that much information, but if there is a common denominator like your name, phone number, or email address, it’s possible to link lots of quizzes, polls, and information together to create a comprehensive profile on you.Be very skeptical of any Facebook quiz or online poll, they may appear harmless on the surface but you don’t know the intentions of the people running them.
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Manage Your Google and Facebook Data | HelloEdwin.com“...Through the course of our day Facebook, Google, and other apps gather and store our online activity and data. It’s important to understand how to manage what information these companies and third-party apps have about you. Follow the links below to take control of your data…”Facebook quizzes: What happens to your data? | BBC “... That personal data included name, profile picture, age, sex, birthday, entire friend list, everything you have posted on your timeline, all of your photos, home town, education history and everything you have ever liked...”Cambridge Analytica and the Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz | NYTimes“...If ever you’ve answered questions like these on one of the free personality quizzes floating around Facebook, you’ll have learned what’s known as your Ocean score: How you rate according to the big five psychological traits of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism…”“...Imagine the full capability of this kind of “psychographic” advertising. In future Republican campaigns, a pro-gun voter whose Ocean score ranks him high on neuroticism could see storm clouds and a threat: The Democrat wants to take his guns away. A separate pro-gun voter deemed agreeable and introverted might see an ad emphasizing tradition and community values, a father and son hunting together…”