There’s nothing more irritating than having a Facebook news feed that’s littered with the results of the inane quizzes that were completed by your friends. Not only are these quizzes a complete waste of time, they’re also actually very detrimental to your privacy as well.
Take for example, the “Most Used Words” quiz that has recently gone viral. Before it can work its magic, you’ll first have to provide it with an extensive amount of your personal details, which includes your name, birthdate, sex, hometown, photos, education details, details of the content you’ve Liked, your entire friend list, everything you’ve shared on your timeline, information about the browser you’re using and its language, and last but not least, your IP address.
Yes, the quiz needs all that information about you before it can generate a simple ‘word cloud’ that comprises of the words you’ve frequently used in your Facebook statuses. A little overkill, don’t you think so?
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. According to a blog post by Internet security website Comparitech, the South Korean developer behind the “Most Used Words” quiz, Vonvon, is able to store all of the user data it has gathered for an unlimited amount of time on servers that are located across the globe. What they intend to do with it is anyone’s guess.
Vonvon’s chief executive, Jonghwa Kim, was quick to respond to the privacy concerns that were raised against his company. Speaking to VentureBeat, he said that there was not much that his company could do with the data.
“There are some false rumors that we are trying to capture people’s information so we can sell it to third parties,” said Jonghwa Kim, CEO of Vonvon. “We don’t really get any meaningful information when people use our apps. And when they share it on their walls, it really doesn’t have much information about them,” he added.
Vonvon’s “Most Used Words” is just one example of the hundred odd quizzes on Facebook that requires some degree of user information before you can actually complete them. If you value your privacy, it would be best for you to abstain from Facebook quizzes completely.
