Want to find out who your dumbest friend on Facebook is? You don’t have to take a quiz, you just have to look in the mirror.
In the last couple weeks, your Facebook feed has probably been clogged with friends sharing where they will be in five years, their celebrity twin and which friends care about them most (awkward if you didn’t make the cut), all according to super accurate and high–tech quizzes. The results are obviously rubbish (sorry, but you don’t look like Beyoncé. You’re jewish. And a boy.). But eventually you caved in to the urge to find out who would join you in a zombie apocalypse. You have nothing to lose. Wrong!
With every quiz you take, your private and valuable information is given away for free.
Think about it. Before you were able to learn that Leonardo DiCaprio is fighting for your love, you had to agree to give QuizzStar access to your photos, friends, timeline, etc. That is a lot of information to give to a random company that does who knows what with it. You don’t even let Grandma see all your photos; why would you let a stranger leer at your drunkest moments?
Given, there probably isn’t someone across the country sitting in front of a screen analyzing every post on your wall. Rather, all your information is likely put into a database where it can be sold to third parties. Read: sold. That's right: sold. Ever wonder why Facebook still doesn’t charge for accounts? Because they are making money off all the advertising opportunities users bring. The same goes for Nametests, which so kindly lets us know its quizzes are “100 percent free of charge.” Um… they better be. If anything, they should be paying us.
Last year, Vonvon went under fire for accessing private account information from over 17 million people dying to know what words they use most on Facebook. The quiz still exists, but has been marked for the intrepid, those who don’t cower at the thought of giving up all their data for free.
Even if you are one of those reckless souls who says they have nothing to hide, there still is the catch that you are giving away information about your friends. Now, do you actually care about your Facebook friends? That’s another question.
If you have taken enough quizzes, you should know at least your top 20 friends that are worth your concern. We’ll admit it. Sometimes these tests open eyes to hard truths. Like that creepy old co–worker is waiting for you to be single. Or your frenemy is set to catch the flowers at your wedding. But everything else is complete trash or complete lies we would love to believe. Like our face is a mix of J. Law and Kim K. If we are going to give them so much information, shouldn’t they give us the truth?
