Online quizzes may seem innocent enough, but in some cases, people who take the quiz might be giving more away than they originally thought.
These quizzes ask seemingly silly or useless questions, but hackers can use that information to penetrate social media accounts and gain access to personal information or the information of friends and family.
According to Khristian Ibarrola, of Inquirer.net, “Once answered, hackers can easily hijack personal accounts and use them to lure in more victims.” The hackers will include links embedded in the quiz that can cause a security breach of personal accounts.
Red flags people should be aware of include a quiz that asks individuals to sign into a social site, give their e-mail address, or send to several friends to gain the quiz results.
“The danger in each of these scenarios is that users are giving away even more access to a hacker,” says Olivia Smith, communications manager at the Better Business Bureau. “By connecting these malware links to your social accounts, the hacker is one step closer to all of the accounts of your friends, too. They can also pose as you and send their quiz or corrupted links to friends, who will be more likely to take a quiz or click a link coming from a friend than if it was coming from an unknown user.”
The next time you come across a quiz think about where it’s coming from, if the website is unfamiliar to you move on.
The Better Business Bureau offers the following tips to avoid an online quiz scam:
— Be skeptical: Before taking a quiz, figure out who created it. Is it a recognized and trusted brand?
— Adjust privacy settings: Review social media account privacy settings and be strict about what information is shared.
— Remove personal details from social media profiles: Don’t share information like a phone number or home address on Facebook or other accounts.
— Don’t accept friend requests from unknown people. — from the Better Business Bureau.
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