If you have been on Facebok for more than a couple days, you've no doubt come across some number of their interesting and enlightening quizzes. These nuggets of internet gold attempt to answer man's most perplexing questions such as "Which Super Mario character would you be?", "How gangsta are you?" and one even offers guidance on which quizzes you should take.
Recently, the ACLU 'Blog of rights' posted "Quiz: What Do Facebook Quizzes Know About You?" I encourage everyone to read it through. The gist of it is this...
1. Nearly anyone on Facebook can create a quiz.
2. The creator of the quiz can and will gather information about you and potentially all your friends, despite your security settings.
3. The creator of the quiz can do whatever they want with that information... sell it, use it to correlate other information even give it away.
Personalization of the web is happening now. Google knows more about you then you could ever imagine. They use it to improve search results and to guide better ads to more likely sales prospects. Google is a big company with a reputation built on the maxim "Do no evil". But what will the creator of the "Which pie are you?" quiz do with your data and what does he have at risk if you catch him doing something nefarious?
The fact is that, the internet is a reflection of the physical world and like the 3D world, there are good and bad people doing good and bad things. And just as you can't just hide in your house for the rest of your life, you do need to 'get out' and play with the other kids At the same time, need to keep your eyes open for 'stranger danger' (and his friend, the Nigerian Prince).
Remember, like Las Vegas, what happens on the internet, stays on the internet. Be thoughtful of who/what you share information with because you never know where it may show up again.
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