Social Media Quizzes Can Lead to Potential Cyber Scams
With so many of us being stuck at home while social distancing, we are looking for nearly anything to keep us occupied. Online social media quizzes are being posted at a much higher rate than usual as a result, and while it is fun to share your favorite colors, your high school mascot, and how many times you have been divorced with your friends and family, quizzes like this also provide potentially sensitive data to the internet bad guys. Often, questions on these quizzes are very similar, if not identical to the security questions places like Banks or even your work, might use to help you reset your lost/forgotten passwords and can also be used in Spear Phishing (highly targeted email phishing) attacks against you.
For example, if you post that you went to a local High School and graduated in 2000, it would be pretty easy to send you an email pretending to be from the “20 year reunion committee” and asking if you are interested in joining us, while providing a link to sign up, but actually using a malicious link that leads to malware.
Instead of posting quizzes, find some time to call or video chat with friends or family and ask each other the questions. You will get some much needed human contact, and learn some things about people!
