Your Uncle Jeffrey has shared a quiz that he did on Facebook about what kind of superhero he would be. While that looks tempting to do, it’s best to steer clear of any and all social media quizzes.
The topics might be lighthearted, and a lot of the questions might not be direct in getting specific information from you, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t help scammers or hackers find important information to security questions on bank accounts.
There is a treasure of information located on the vast array of social media servers in Silicon Valley and beyond. This personal information is available to anyone on Facebook, by default:
Name: Your name is the first step to taking over your identity.
Date of birth: This is an important step under the medical privacy law HIPAA to authenticate your identity.
Address: This can be obtained by looking at pictures that have been geotagged.
That is enough information for a bad guy to show up at your pharmacy and pick up your medications, so imagine what else they could do with it?
The quizzes only need a small amount of information to start getting down to business scamming you for more than just your prescriptions.
Sometimes they get what they want by redirecting you to a site that downloads malicious code to your computer. Other times the quiz itself is the culprit, perhaps teasing your mother’s maiden name out of you by charting your family tree or drawing a bogus family crest for you.
Also suspicious are quizzes and apps that rate things according to ZIP code — with ZIP code being a common question credit card processors ask for remote transactions.
Here are some more tips:
Be wary of having to sign in or create a profile in places you’ve never been to before.
Don’t show your kids’ faces.
Don’t overshare your emotions — scammers love this.
Keep some rooms in your house private and don’t display your stuff. People can make a lot of accurate assumptions about you based on what you own.
If you start losing friends, unethical and “scammy” apps may be pestering them. “Friends of Friends” is an option on Facebook for advertisers.
My last piece of advice involves a little lying on the security questions that are so ubiquitous lately. Think of it as a chance to create a new story for yourself.
This article was originally posted on the International Business Times.
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