Giving Away Your Personal Data

Here at Selfishgenie Publishing we use social media as a marketing tool. If you read our series of blogs on the subject (still available in the archive) you will see that it is cheap and quite effective if used well.
 
However, there is a darker side to social media marketing and people are falling for it every day. Actually, there are two dark sides. The first is dark, the second is very dark.
 
The plain dark is the way social media is used to capture your personal data, which is then sold to third parties so they can bombard you with advertising.
 
We’re not talking about the usual clicking of the “agree” button for terms and conditions. That is just the way that social media sites make money by letting you use their platforms for free. If you don’t agree, you can’t use the platform. Seemples.

---

No, we mean the way memes are used to capture data.

​You may think it’s just a fun question for you to answer, but it isn’t. It is aimed at grabbing a little snippet of personal data from you that will be of use to someone in targeting their adverts. Not only that, but you even give them the address to which they can send the advert.
 
I’ll give you an example. One meme that appears quite regularly is “Name something from your childhood that young people today wouldn’t understand.”
 
Sounds harmless, doesn’t it? Just a bit of fun.
 
But your answer puts you firmly into a specific age bracket. That tiny scrap of data can then be used to target you for adverts aimed at your age group. If you happen to be our age, it might be stairlifts, funeral plans or walk-in bathtubs.

---

And how do they get your address?

​It’s your social media username, which shows up every time you reply to one of these posts. That gives them access to your profile as well, which probably provides them with even more personal data.
 
It also tells the person that posted the meme something else about you. It tells them you were gullible enough to respond to the meme. And if you were gullible enough to do that, you may be gullible enough to fall for an advert for a substandard, or even non-existent, product.

---

Other age-related questions are based around subjects such as music (a song or band name can give away the decade when you were a teenager), films, books, TV shows, the car in which you learnt to drive etc.
 
So, what is the “very dark” side of these memes.
 
It relates to cybercrime.
 
It’s the questions that are aimed at trying to get hold of your passwords so that your accounts can be hacked. You may think I mean your bank accounts, Paypal etc, but I don’t. I mean your social media accounts, because many of these are used as the basis for scams of one sort or another.

---

"You may think that none of your friends would be stupid enough to fall for a scam"

​If I can make myself appear to be you, by posting on one of your social media accounts, then your friends may trust what has been posted. It also allows me to access the list of all your social media friends, which I can sell.

​You may think that none of your friends would be stupid enough to fall for a scam, but hundreds of thousands of people across the world, good, honest and above all intelligent people, have fallen for these scams. It only needs one of your hundreds of social media friends to fall victim for the scammer to win.
 
So those sorts of posts will ask you about your first car, your first pet, your first school and a whole lot of similar things because those are the sorts of things that are used as passwords or as the answers to security questions.

​These also include you “pornstar” or “stripper” names, or even your secret agent name. eg “The last thing you ate and the name of your first pet is your secret agent name.”
 
You wouldn’t tell someone your account number and password for your bank account, but you are happy to tell them the name of your first pet – which is almost as revealing. There are other ways of getting the account number and password, you’re just making things a bit easier for them when they try to hack your account, by providing the answers to the security questions or memorable information

---

So, other than the age-related memes, what others should you be on the lookout for?
 
The most obvious ones are worded like this.
 
“You are about to be attacked by a zombie. The last thing you bought is the weapon you must use to fight it. What will you use?”
 
That’s quite an easy one to identify, because it relates directly to products. If you bought the thing you are going to use against this hypothetical zombie, then you’re likely to buy more of the same.
 
How about this one. “It’s your best friend’s birthday today. The nearest thing to your right hand is what you will be giving them as a birthday present. What will they get?”
 
Again, this is product related, because whatever you answer can then be used to target you for similar products. If you say “a plate of biscuits”, then you’ll be targeted for biscuit advertising (or, more likely, sweet things in general). You may also become a target for advertising for plus sized clothing or dieting aids.

---

An answer related to smoking products may result in you being targeted for nicotine replacement therapies, books on how to stop smoking or drugs to help you stop smoking (which may or may not work and may even be harmful to your health).
 
OK, how about something a little bit different. “The last place you visited is where you will spend your honeymoon. Where will you go?”
 
Whatever your answer, you will be targeted for advertising for similar destinations, cheap airline seats, hotels, etc.
 
Now, if you don’t mind being targeted for advertising, then there’s nothing wrong with any of this. But if you’d rather spend your social media time actually socialising, rather than scrolling through adverts, you might do well to avoid responding to those memes.

---

You may think that your “advertising preferences”, which you have carefully selected on your favourite social media sites, will protect you against these adverts. You would be wrong.
 
These simply tell the site’s owners (Facebook, Twitter, Insta et al) who they can direct adverts for certain products towards in order to maximise the number of clicks for the advertisers. They won’t prevent you from seeing advertising from other sources that are paying those same sites to “boost” a post or whatever term the site uses.

Believe it or not, there is no way that you can actually prevent advertising from appearing on your social media pages.
 
All you can do is tell the sites which products you’re not too unhappy seeing. You’ll see all the others anyway because they’re paying the social media site to blast the adverts out to anyone who has an account.
 
But giving away your little bits of data allows those “blast it out” type of advertisers to refine their audience by targeting you personally, by age, gender, interests, purchasing habits, cultural tastes etc

---

And, when you ask yourself “How did they know that about me?”, the answer will be “Because you told them.”

Many of the products will be genuine but remember what we said about targeting the gullible.

That’s how scams work, because they’ll try to get your money by selling products they have no intention of ever delivering.

​How do you know they actually own that holiday cottage or Spanish villa they are offering to rent you? They will also try to sell you products which may not conform to safety standards. You have no idea where the sellers of the products may be based, so you have no way of finding out if they are reputable.
 
There are ways of countering this form of data snatching and that is to tell lies. If the data that is captured is inaccurate it becomes useless, because the advertiser is directing their adverts towards people who won’t buy their product or service (whether it’s real or a fake). That means they are wasting their money and will have to find some other way of identifying their target audience.
 
They will find that way, of course, but there’s no need for you to collaborate with them in their search.

---

“Does this tell somebody something about me that they didn’t, or couldn’t, otherwise know?”

​There is one thing we can all do when we read these memes. It is to ask ourselves one simple question:
 
“Does this tell somebody something about me that they didn’t, or couldn’t, otherwise know?”

​If the answer is yes, you are making an informed choice about whether or not to post your answer.  You don’t have to. It isn’t compulsory. And if you choose not to answer, you will reduce the amount of advertising (real or scam) that appears on your social media feeds.
 
For the darker forms of data capture, the ones that are aimed at finding out the answers to security questions, then the questions is much simpler.
 
“If I answer this question, could it compromise the security of any of my accounts?” Again, telling lies in answer to the questions makes the information useless and it will frustrate the scammers, which is actually a result for us good guys.
 
One thing of which we can be sure is that the people who post these memes aren’t acting in your best interests. If they were, they wouldn’t be hiding behind fake user IDs and asking seemingly innocent questions in order to grab your personal data. It’s up to you whether you co-operate with them, but we recommend you don’t.

​If you have enjoyed reading this blog, or found it informative, why not make sure you don't miss future editions by signing up for our newsletter. We promise not to spam you, or to sell your data to scammers.

​Just click on the button below.

---

Yes Please. Sign Me Up For Your Newsletter