The Better Business Bureau (BBB) is issuing a new warning about quizzes on Facebook that appear innocuous, but could potentially be quite sinister. I have written about many Facebook scams over the years including the May 5, 2017 Scam of the day involving a Facebook quiz entitled “10 Concerts, but there is one act that I haven’t seen live.  Which is it?”  While this may appear harmless, the information you provide may tell more about you than you may think. It may provide information about your approximate age and preferences in music which can then be used by a scammer to send you a phishing email tailored to appeal to your particular interests that you may trust and click on a link contained in the email that contains either keystroke logging malware that can be used to steal your identity or ransomware.
The BBB warning describes similar quizzes such as what is your favorite television character, but it also describes more insidious quizzes where a pop-up appears on your screen when you start the quiz that indicates that by taking the quiz, you give permission to the quiz’s creators to gain access to your profile information, photographs and any of your Facebook content. This should be an immediate warning to not take the quiz because that information can readily be used to make you or your friends victims of identity theft.
TIPS
We all tend to put too much personal information on social media that can be exploited by scammers and identity thieves to our detriment. However, if you, as many people do, find games appearing on your social media to be fun to play, you may want to just adjust your privacy setting to “friends only” so that you limit who gets to see your answers. This also may be a good time for you to review your profile and see what information such as your phone number, home address or even your birth date that you may wish to remove.