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Scams Are Being Disguised as Facebook Quizzes, Better Business Bureau Warns

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Silly Facebook quizzes: We’ve all taken them. After all, if we have just a few minutes to ourselves each day, there’s nothing wrong with being curious about, say, which flower best fits our personality, right? While it’s not uncommon to see quizzes with fun topics like that floating around on the social media site, some Facebook quizzes out there may actually be scams, according to the Better Business Bureau (BBB).

In fact, even Facebook quizzes that ask silly or seemingly harmless questions can be risky, says the BBB. Hackers can actually use the information you give away in a quiz to access your social media accounts and your personal information, as well as information about your friends and family members. Sometimes, these hackers will embed links into quizzes that cause a security breach of your personal accounts. Other times, scam artists will prompt you to sign into a social website or provide your email address before you even take the quiz. In other cases, you may be asked to send the quiz to friends before you can receive the results of your own quiz.

“The danger in each of these scenarios is that you’re giving away even more access to a hacker,” said Olivia Smith, communications manager of BBB serving Central Virginia. “By connecting these malware links to your social accounts, the hacker is one step closer to all of the accounts of your friends, too. They can also pose as you and send their quiz or corrupted links to your friends, who will be more likely to take a quiz or click a link coming from a friend than if it was coming from an unknown user.”

Yikes! That’s the last thing we’d want to have happen to us or our friends — especially after we were taking a seemingly innocent quiz. Luckily, the BBB has some great tips to avoid a Facebook quiz scam — and to know whether it’s safe to proceed to find out what flower you are, after all.

BBB’s Tips to Avoid a Facebook Quiz Scam

  1. Be skeptical: Before you take a quiz, figure out who created it. Is it a brand you trust?

  2. Adjust privacy settings: Review your social media account’s privacy settings and be strict about what information you share.

  3. Remove personal details from your profile: Don’t share information like your phone number or home address on Facebook or other accounts.

  4. Don’t accept friend requests from people you don’t know.

h/t Better Business Bureau

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