Why You Shouldn’t Play This Fun Quarantine Game on Facebook
If you’ve been on Facebook lately, you’ve probably seen an influx of “fun” games that ask you to tell everyone the names of every street you lived on, or every car you owned, or a song that was popular a year. your birth. Or what about what prompts you to post your high school photo?
At first glance, all of these suggestions seem funny than you might share with your friends. In fact, all these messages can be used by hackers to gain access to your personal accounts.
Of course, your friend who posted this is probably not a hacker. They probably saw another friend post it, they got bored and decided to participate too.
However, if you pay attention, you will notice that the answers to all these fun games are the same answers you can enter when trying to verify your identity on the website to reset your password. When you post these answers online, you make it easier for those who are not your friend to find them and use them against you.
“The song that was popular when you were born” can give a hacker a birthday. The alumni photo you signed is “North High School Eagles 1979!” tell someone what year you graduated from high school and what your mascot was. Things like the street you grew up on and the make and model of your first car speak for themselves.
Think about what you are posting, and if you need the answer as part of your security question, do not post it .
If you absolutely can’t resist getting involved (again, not worth it), make sure you only share these responses with your friends, not your friends of friends or the world in general. You can do this by clicking the icon next to the time stamp on the message and changing the privacy of the message to Friends.
Your best bet, of course, is to just unsubscribe from these posts and perhaps leave a link to this one in the comments to any of them you see. While this “fun quarantine game” is innocent enough now, it won’t be fun at all when you’re trying to get your accounts back.