If you’re a keen social media user, you might have spotted quizzes popping up on your Facebook newsfeed from time to time. Whether or not you’ve ever been seduced into completing one, this message is for you: be very, very careful what you share.
There are, of course, thousands of legitimate online questionnaires that have been created just for fun. But in recent years there has been a spate of pages set up by hackers with the sole purpose of getting your personal data to open lines of credit in your name.
Popular quizzes claim to be able to decipher a number of weird and wonderful personality traits or future events, and hook users in with their promises of uncanny, unprecedented results. They will often employ a series of personal questions to gather your data, but you may want to think twice before you readily type your first pet’s name into a social media quiz from now on.
But how do you sift out the legitimate questions from the scams? “If you must patronize a company or service that forces you to select secret questions,” Krebs advised, “I think it’s a really good idea not to answer them truthfully. Just make sure you have a method for remembering your phoney answer,” he continued, soundly, “in case you forget the lie somewhere down the road.”
Police departments have had their eye on this issue for some time. Typical answers to these types of quiz questions, they warn, can be very similar to the information asked for by banking security when setting up or accessing accounts. If you are easily seduced by online quizzes, then hackers may be able to build fake profiles in your name or even go as far as to steal your identity.
“There’s no win, so move on from the bait on the trap because you aren’t impressing anyone, and why risk having personally identifiable information stolen?”
It’s your identity. Hang on to it.
