Slashdot Mirror
The Hidden Secrets of Online Quizzes
LegionKK points out a story on PC World, sending along this excerpt: "Ultimately, deciding whether you should take an online quiz comes down to a question of trust: Are you comfortable putting your information — personal or financial — into the owner's hands? Remember, even if you don't directly input data, it can be passed along. Such is the case with Facebook, where just opening an application automatically grants its developer access to your entire profile. And don't assume that the developer isn't going to use the information within. [...] The ads can follow you long after you click away, too. Just look at RealAge, a detailed quiz that assigns you a 'biological age' based on your family history and health habits. The site, a recent investigation revealed, takes your most sensitive answers — those about sexual difficulties, say, or signs of depression — and sells them to drug companies looking to market medications."
It's not hard. If you give information, ANY INFORMATION, to anyone for anything you have to check *what* they are going to do with it. This means reading their T&C's, following up all that brings up etc. Or, you can just NOT give out personal information that you don't want spread around.
In the one instance, this means that when you sign up for a website with username, email or password requested, you should *always* check what's going to happen to that information (e.g. using your email for marketing). On the other hand, when you are logged into Facebook and scary warnings pop up about sharing your information... you should think twice before you agree and/or make sure that you NEVER use that account to post anything personal that you wouldn't want shared.
This has never been any different. I've filled in paper surveys which distribute the same personal information to God-knows-who-but-probably-only-the-people-listed-in-the-T&C's.
If you're that worried, don't fill in sexual quizzes on Facebook, or do it under a different identity. To be more honest, given the current state of that site, I'd be more worried that after filling in that kind of quiz, it would blast the results or even my answers to my listed friends and family even if it's just by posting them to my own page. That's a million times worse than having a drug company see a "TRUE" pop up in their advertising database against my Facebook ID. I can ignore the ads...
Personally I don't care if company A sells my information to company B to use in advertising, or if company A just uses my personal information to advertise on behalf of company B. It's still assholes using my information to try to make money. And flood my inbox doing it.
Another good reason not to be on Facebook.
Er, why not just stop using Facebook, as I have? Facebook is a total mess. You've pretty much denounced all that Facebook has come to be about.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
If I truly believe that shouldn't the resulting number be around 4?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
They are "get to know you" games. They give people an excuse for social interaction--so you don't get those long blank moments where nobody knows what to say. You can only talk about the weather for so long. They also help you learn the details of your friends, so you can improve your interactions with them. Then again, since this is slashdot, I suppose I shouldn't expect anyone to understand basic social interaction.
It sounds like the social networking sites don't know or don't care about security and privacy. Big shock. If any of them are programmers, they are probably VB programmers. The whole MS / MCSE culture doesn't care about security, and they are often hostile towards it.
OTOH real age is directed at adults. The only link is an email address, which users can get from yahoo and anonymize if they wish. The question, to me, is then whether real age serves a legitimate entertainment purpose for which users pay through their use by looking at ads and generating data, and if such data is aggregate. It is like people who put movies and pictures on free web sites and then complain that they cannot be deleted.
Most of us have little probem with shopping at stores where we use a card for a discount in exchange for our consent to collect and sell our personal buying habits(inordinate amount of crisco?). It seems to me that facebook goes beyond this, but many other sites do not.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Since I use unique e-mails for most everything I do on the 'net, I know when this happens. I've used realage a couple of times and have not received any ads or e-mails to the realage e-mail address.
The method works as I started getting lots of porn advertising to one of my unique addresses. I sent them an e-mail asking them where they got the address and asking them to stop. They didn't so I filter the address.
Same with the occasional forum spam. If I forget to hide my e-mail address (done it once), I start getting spam to that address. I filter the address, changed the e-mail and flipped on "hide e-mail". No further spams from that address.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Er, why not just stop using Facebook, as I have? Facebook is a total mess. You've pretty much denounced all that Facebook has come to be about.
Because I use Facebook for many other things: keeping up to date on friends and family around the world, keeping up to date on local events like concerts, good DJs, parties, other gatherings, etc., knowing automatically when and where my favorite bands will be touring, seeing photos of friends and family, keeping in touch with my former students, and generally wasting time in other ways. All in one convenient place, rather than spread out across email addresses, mailing lists, multiple websites, etc.
There is a lot more to FaceBook than all of the annoying applications, and I don't not use any applications. There are a few that I use and like, however, a.) I wasn't invited to them, I found them when looking for a certain functionality, and therefore felt that their use outweighed any issues with accessing my info, and b.) I didn't invite any of my friends to them, because I know how annoying that is.
Some of us actually do find FaceBook to be useful.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
> If I truly believe that shouldn't the resulting number be around 4?
Based on your sentence structure, I would say that is about right.
I created a Facebook profile just to see what all the hype was about. I was amazed at how many people sent me quizzes and so forth. It really is a pointless waste of time. Just for fun, I took one just to see...and when it asked for my phone number the mission was aborted.
The people who sent me quizzes are smart people, too. I don't know what it is about finding your IQ, or which Star Wars character you are, or whatever. It obviously gives people some kind of fulfillment that makes it worth surrendering so much personal info. I don't get it.
I guess facebook has to make money somehow, but the quizzes seem more slimy than just using the regular old ads we are all used to.
blah blah blah
Another good reason not to be on Facebook.
You are aware that these things aren't mandatory parts of Facebook, right? It's not all that difficult to just ignore them.
There is *no* technical reason why adding a facebook widget requires access to your personal profile. Facebook devs could have easily set it up so this doesn't occur. It is the most shady part about facebook, and I am surprised there isn't more of an uproar about it.
Some of us have friends who are not quite so technologically savvy and these friends use facebook as their main mode of communication. They organise events, send messages and use it to circulate news. I tried getting along without it but it's just not practical when everyone else you know uses it for so many things.
Silly rabbit
I joined Facebook last month and was surprised to see how much control was given to the 'apps' by default.
The question you need to ask when signing up for a site is "what's their business model?" Facebook obviously isn't getting its money from its users, so that means the users have to be the product being sold.
You're right, JackieBrown, and for the most part, I'm lazy enough to rely on the spam filters.
But, Bigbutt is a bit smarter than either of us. Using unique email addies enables him to IDENTIFY where the trash is coming from, and to do something about it. Contacting a forum admin, or confronting MySpace or Facebook, or whatever.
You and me? Because we're lazy, we don't really KNOW where we slipped up, or who is using our personal info, so there's not much we can do - aside from using spam filters. We certainly can't go back and delete accounts and/or personal info in places that we kinda THOUGHT was confidential.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I don't know what it is about finding your IQ, or which Star Wars character you are, or whatever. It obviously gives people some kind of fulfillment that makes it worth surrendering so much personal info. I don't get it.
Its because they don't view it as =SUBMITTING= personal info. They view it as a completely local phenomena... like taking a quiz in a magazine. But with the bonus that it tallies up the result for you and clears the form afterward.
They never connect with the fact that the answers are recorded and stored and attached to their online profile... even if you tell them outright. It just doesn't penetrate.
On the FB "Five People I'd Like to Punch in the Face" quiz, I listed GWB, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Rice. If I get waterboarded because of that, my only regret will be that it didn't allow six so I could put in Rove.
The CB App. What's your 20?
The IQ test is not a Facebook app, and people aren't really sending it to you. That's just an ad styled to look like it is coming from Facebook. Real Facebook apps have access to your phone number from your profile and wouldn't need to ask.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Blocking the applications one at a time is akin to blocking spam, one "From:" at a time.
coffee | nose > keyboard