"Remember Cambridge Analytica? That scandal should have been our wake-up call. Yet here we are, still clicking "Allow" on quiz apps that want access to our profiles, friends lists, and posting history. WIRED put it perfectly: "These quizzes can and have been used to build up more detailed profiles of people and their friends, collecting not just the answers to the quizzes themselves but also other information stored in the linked Facebook accounts.""
"Think about what happens when you take that "What's Your Spirit Animal?" quiz. You grant the app permission to access your profile. Suddenly, they have your full name, birthday, hometown, relationship status, work history, and the names of all your friends and family members. That's before you even answer the first question. The quiz itself then extracts your preferences, personality traits, and behavioral patterns. Combined with your profile data, they now have a psychological profile that would make any marketer salivate."
Social media quizzes and nostalgic prompts request broad permissions that often expose profile information, friends lists, and posting history. Linked apps can collect birthdays, hometowns, relationship status, work history, and names of friends and family. Quiz answers and behavior data combine with profile fields to create detailed psychological and preference profiles. Those profiles are valuable to marketers and vulnerable to malicious actors who can use them to answer security questions, break into accounts, and commit identity theft. Past incidents like Cambridge Analytica illustrate the scale and misuse of such aggregated data. Vigilance and permission restraint reduce exposure.
Read at Silicon Canals
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