Signal Spring 2022 Newsletter

8 www.alliancecom.net These memes are not being created by one of your Facebook friends. They’re coming from a public account that you probably don’t follow. Often it’s supposedly a radio station in another part of the country or an account named something cute like “just for laughs” or “memory lane” or “no biggie.” But the problem is, this may indeed be a “biggie.”You could be giving your personal information to data miners. Understanding the Process How does data mining work? Because of the way the Facebook algorithm is set up, answering the question in one of these memes will result in Facebook showing you more content by this poster and other similar posters. In addition, your Facebook friends can see the post you responded to and your answer to the question. If they respond to your com- ment, like your comment, or answer the question themselves, they also begin to see more memes with questions in their Facebook feeds. If you get in the habit of answering questions, data miners are betting that you’ll eventually be less careful with scrutinizing them. For example, you may start out answering questions about food or concerts. But next you see a meme with the question, “How old would you be if the digits in your age were reversed?” followed later by “Your birth month determines which celebrity you marry. Are you happy?” with pictures of famous people laid out in a calendar grid. Answering these types of questions can enable a data miner to begin putting pieces of the data puzzle together about you. Be aware that some of the questions posted by data miners are carefully written to get answers to common security questions such as maiden names, grandparents’ names, where you vacationed as a kid, make and model of your first car, your first pet’s name, and the name of your elementary school. Memes Might Be Data Mines Some questions on Facebook aren’t as innocent as they look You’ve no doubt seen memes like this on your Facebook feed. They ask you to respond in the comments to seemingly fun questions such as these: What food would you never eat? What was the first concert you went to? What grocery store did you shop at growing up?