Beware of the new quiz on Facebook: It is a threat to privacy
A new quiz extremely popular on Facebook could pose a severe threat to the safety of some of the personal information we have on the social network.
A new quiz is becoming viral on Facebook and is a great example of how seemingly innocuous content on social networks can be a major threat to the security of the data in the same insert. Created by Vonvon.me, he promises the quiz to find out which words a user uses most frequently, shame ” to do ” needs access to an enormous amount of personal information of the same.
The quiz results were shared almost 20 million times at the time of writing, and is now a phenomenon rooted particularly in the US and that could arrive soon in other countries. Specifically, using the quiz ” your most-used words on Facebook ” is delivered to the company Vonvon.me access to many parts of your account. A real nightmare for privacy, which often accepts without even read.
Comparitech published a list that shows the required permissions on Facebook:
- Names, profile photo, age, sex, date of birthday and other public information.
- List of friends.
- Content posted on your wall.
- Personal photos and where the user is tagged.
- Education.
- Hometown and current.
- I like history.
- IP address.
- Information on the device, the browser and on the tongue.
A bit too much for a simple little game, do not you think? This is a list of permissions similar to that required by a very large number of games on the social network of Zuckerberg, a list that appears when you first start the application. Sometimes you can select which permissions to the app, but in this case the quiz Vonvon.me not work properly if they are excluded, some.
The real problem is that, as many entities that collect user data, also Vonvon.me do it for one simple reason. The company writes in its Privacy Policy that when you connect the app to Facebook user gives explicit permission to Vonvon.me to continue to use the information even after you delete the account. The user also gives permission to store information on remote servers of Vonvon.me, even if they are located in states where it is not considered the protection of user privacy.
Vonvon.me also writes that does not share personally identifiable information to third parties without notifying the user, but at the same time he also writes that the same Privacy Policy represent a notification to that effect. In short, if we participate in the play, Vonvon.me has free will on your account, and so many other developers who release their seemingly innocent pastimes on the social network. It is worth knowing what is the most popular phrase on our profile? Probably, indeed certainly, no.
