Social Media Scenario: Surveys — Logical Cybersecurity

Beginner's Guide to Privacy and Security

Best practices and recommendations on how to protect and recover from compromised accounts and computers, use real-world scenarios to detail how scams and phishing emails are used and provide best practices on how to use the internet in a more safe and secure manner to protect yourself, your family, and your clients.

A Beginner's Guide to Privacy and Security

Trying to remain safe online, practicing good security and working to keep your data private is extremely challenging. This is made even more difficult with the speed at which technology changes, vulnerabilities are discovered, and attackers change their tactics. Just when you think you have learned the right techniques to keep your data private and your devices, email, etc., secure, another breach is announced, a new vulnerability is discovered in your operating system or web browser, and/or attackers come up with another scam/trick to gain access to your devices or information...all of which are out of your control. If you aren't tech savvy, it can be even more overwhelming. Since technology and attack methods change so rapidly, there are no simple answers or steps you can take to be 100% protected. This is where we are hoping we can help by recommending steps you can take to increase the security of your accounts and devices, better protect your privacy, and be safer online. Check out our "Security 101" section for a collection of the minimum security procedures everyone should be following.

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Surveys seen on Facebook, Twitter, etc. seem harmless and a lot are, but be careful for surveys that could be used to gather private personal information. It's important to remember, one piece of information may not say much about you or your family, but if you add several pieces of information together someone would learn quite a bit.

Although surveys usually seem harmless, the truth is they can also be used for malicious reasons. These malicious surveys can easy hide in plain sight. For example, someone could ask a seemingly harmless question on Facebook such as name 8 concerts you have been to and 1 you haven't then friends will attempt to guess which concert you haven't attended. Sounds pretty innocent right? Well, consider this...

You let your friends guess and you finally tell them you went to these 7 concerts and never had been to the 8th. Plus, you say one of the concerts was the first concert you had ever been to. They asked if you planned to see the 8th concert and you say yes, because they have always been your favorite band. I know you may be thinking..."How is this a bad thing?" or "How can this be used against me?"

Well, what happens if you chose to answer the security question, "What is your favorite band?" and you answered it truthfully. A lot of people now know the answer to that security question. Some websites also have security questions like, "What is your favorite type of music?" or "What was the first concert you attended?" People may now have answers to those questions as well.

Let's assume you aren't commenting on a "public" post or survey. You may be thinking, "Well, these are my friends and they wouldn't use that information for anything malicious." That may be true, but what about the friends of your friends? If you have "friends of friends" set as your permissions, then any of the friends of your friends can see the answers and post. You don't have any control over who they friend. They may be one of those people that friend anyone and everyone who now have over 800 friends, most of which they don't truly know. If you have responded to a post or survey a friend or friend of a friend has posted, then you have no control over who can see your answers and truly no idea who has seen the answers.

If you have just "friends" set as your permission, then it is more controlled. However, do you remember everyone you have friended? Have you friended anyone you met on random Facebook games? Are you one of those people with over 800 Facebook friends, most of whom you don't truly know? I always remind people, don't be concerned with having the most friends. It shouldn't be a contest to have the biggest number of friends, for a variety of reasons, but most importantly due to people having access to your, or your family's, private information. Have you went through your list of Facebook friends lately to see if anyone should be removed? If not, I would strongly recommended to periodically go through your friends lists on the various social networking sites, such as Facebook, to audit your friends list.

This scenario was to get you thinking about answering future surveys or social media questions. Think twice about the survey by asking yourself:

Are the questions too personal?
Do they reveal private information about you or your family?
Can the answers be used maliciously?
Who is asking the questions or sponsoring the survey?
What are the answers being used for?
Who is receiving the answers? (the people or company receiving the answers can be different than the person or company giving the survey)

Since we did talk about security questions, I should mention a couple things. It's hard to remember the answers to those security questions if you don't answer them truthfully, but answering them truthfully can, and probably does, mean someone else knows those answers. You may consider answering security questions with fake answers you can remember. A password manager can be helpful in this regard.