Have you ever played one of those seemingly-innocuous free quizzes that regularly pop up in your Facebook feed? Be careful: it could be there in order to collect personal information about you, without your knowledge or explicit consent.
Facebook has figured prominently in the news recently—and not in a good way—after it was revealed the social media giant exposed data on 50 million Facebook users to a researcher who worked at Cambridge Analytica, which in turn worked for the Donald Trump campaign during the last election. It has been alleged that Cambridge Analytica mined personal information from that data, unbeknownst to the account holders.
How was the data gleaned? From 270,000 Facebook users who answered a quiz that was in their feed. More worryingly, the data of all the users’ Facebook friends was also exposed.
The revelation has shone a spotlight on Facebook, leading many to wonder how secure their information is, who has access to it, what uses it is being put to, and whether they should cancel their Facebook accounts.
While the Cambridge Analytica data mining of Facebook accounts is getting most of the attention, Google is another entity that has quietly built up detailed profiles of its users. In a shocking article in The Guardian (“Are you ready? Here is all the data Facebook and Google have on you”, http://bit.ly/2pYrxWi), journalist Dylan Curran details just what Facebook and Google know about you, from where you’ve been, the apps you use, and everything you’ve ever searched or deleted to all your photos and videos, every location you have ever logged in from, and all the contacts in your phone.
When Curran downloaded all the data Google had about him, the result was three million Word documents’-worth of information (Facebook, by comparison, had 400,000 Word documents’-worth of data).
With all this information about you at its virtual fingertips, it is little wonder that data mining companies turn to Facebook in particular as a source of information. Facebook users are unwittingly giving information away every time they use the platform, and the Better Business Bureau (BBB) wants to remind consumers that what they share online—often completely innocently—can be used for illegal or unethical reasons.
Sometimes this information collection takes what appears to be a harmless form. Social media quizzes, which are especially popular on Facebook (“Can you identify these 1980s rock songs?” “Are you smarter than a fifth-grader?”), seem innocent enough. But taking the quizzes might mean you are giving away more about yourself than you originally thought, and may extend to your Facebook friends as well.
These quizzes ask seemingly silly or useless questions, but hackers can use that information to penetrate your social accounts and gain access to your personal information or the information of your friends and family. As the recent Cambridge Analytica case has demonstrated, your personal information is big business.
“We always knew someone was trying to trick us with social media quizzes, because they are free,” says BBB’s chief security officer Bill Fanelli, CISSP. “If there is no charge, then the value is the data they can collect. We also knew that it was for a use we probably would not like, because they went to such great lengths to hide their purpose. Now we know we were right on both counts.”
Some quizzes are designed to steal your data in an outright scam. “The quizzes get access to all your contacts, and images from your account,” says Jeanette Jackson, director of communications for the BBB Serving Mainland B.C. “They also collect information about your profile about how likely you are to use certain games, and then sell that information to another company.
“The majority sell data for marketing. They could also use your profile to open another profile, or get access to credit card data down the road. And once they get the data, you’ll see the ads change on Google within a week [to reflect the data].
“People aren’t aware of the privacy settings on Facebook. If you dig deep enough [and change the settings] you probably won’t get the quizzes anymore. But every time Facebook does a major update, the privacy settings change, and you don’t see that upfront. People aren’t aware of that, especially if they’re not on Facebook very often.”
Not all social media quizzes are about unprincipled data collection, but BBB cautions users to be careful about what they share online. Profile data, quiz answers, and more can be used to steal your money, or let a scammer pretend to be you in order to steal someone else’s money. And now we know that seemingly innocent information can even be used to build a profile on you that can be sold to anyone trying to influence society.
Tips that will help you avoid social media scams include being skeptical. Before you take a quiz, figure out who created it. Is it a brand you trust?
Adjust your privacy settings. Review the privacy settings on all your social media accounts—not just Facebook—and be strict about what information you share. If you would not want an unknown third party to be able to see it, change the settings so they can’t.
Make sure to remove personal details from your profile. There’s no need to share information such as your phone number or home address on social media accounts, and this goes double for any information about your children you might have there.
Don’t accept friend requests from people you don’t know. If they have no friends listed, or none who are known to you, delete the request.
As for whether or not you should simply delete your Facebook account, bear in mind that all the information there—even deleted items—will still be available for those determined to find it. And going cold turkey from Facebook might be harder than it sounds, particularly for older people.
“Lots of people use Facebook as a tool to share news of grandchildren,” says Jackson. “It’s a necessary evil, because it’s so easy to use.” She notes, however, that the major demographic still using Facebook is an older one, with younger people abandoning it for other, more secure, platforms.
“The younger generation is more sceptical. They’re not on Facebook, use more privacy settings, and share less information.” Jackson suggests that families worried about sharing too much information on Facebook discuss the situation with family and close friends, and find other ways to share family memories.
Curran concludes his Guardian article (which is required reading for anyone wanting to know the full extent of what information is out there about you) with these words:
“They have every image I’ve ever searched for and saved, every location I’ve ever searched for or clicked on, every news article I’ve ever searched for or read, and every single Google search I’ve made since 2009. And then finally, every YouTube video I’ve ever searched for or viewed, since 2008.
“This is one of the craziest things about the modern age. We would never let the government or a corporation put cameras/microphones in our homes or location trackers on us. But we just went ahead and did it ourselves because—to hell with it!—I want to watch cute dog videos.”
You can find more about BBB and the cyber security resources available to both businesses and consumers at BBB.org/cybersecurity.