Police warn of security risks in playing online quizzes

West Mercia Police have warned of the dangers of joining in quizzes and question on platforms such as Facebook. They say that from phishing schemes to a thief stealing your passport, there are plenty of ways to fall victim to identity theft.

Police teams are urging people to be wary and not end up providing unscrupulous hackers with the answers to online security questions.

Popular Facebook quizzes often ask users to answer a series of sharable personal questions, ranging from the name of their pet to their birth city. Some people see them as a fun way to bond with friends, or a way to make new ones. But the police said many of these queries are similar, if not identical, to security questions used by banks and other institutions.

Detective Sergeant Jon Cooper said: “Please be aware of some of the posts you comment on as they asking innocent questions designed to obtain key data about you, and are becoming more and more clever and covert in the their style and design.

"It’s not just who was your childhood best friend, or your first car, the place you were born or your first pet, but more indirect questions like “have you ever cried over a dog that died?” and then people share their names in the comments quite innocently which are likely to be memorable things and therefore a security question answers for bank accounts etc.

“The same applies if you remember when an album was first released or your favourite class at school. All very cleverly designed to extract vital data about you in an open source where the criminals just sit back and watch people offer up information they can use to hack accounts or steal identities.

"The advice is not to stop engaging with fun things on social media, but to just think about what you’re saying, how personal it is, who you might be saying it to and who might be reading it.

"Organised crime gangs, online fraudsters, text message scammers, cyber criminals and identity thieves are smart, they’re original and they have a global pool of potential victims. Everyone needs to be aware of who has access to their personal information and what you yourself are sharing.

“For more information on how to stay safe online visit our website for advice and support.”