Sunio: The cost of knowing yourself online

LITTLE did you know that you give them your most important personal information just because you want to know yourself better.

Personality quizzes have been popular recently on Facebook and other social media websites. I think more than 50 percent of my feeds have been flooded with results on “How did God made you?,” “What is your spirit animal?” and the likes.

Some have even been annoyed by posts from OMG, LOL, NameTest, and other personality quiz apps on Facebook that they have opted to switch off notifications from these apps on their feeds.

Personally, I also like these tests. Just like others, perhaps I just want to know more about myself. To some, these personality quizzes may give them a feeling of acceptance and being understood.

Well, the results are actually, most of the time, generic. The answers these apps give may apply to many people, but still, the feeling of being understood and being known who you really are still feel great.

However, CNN’s online article titled “Facebook is cracking down on personality quizzes” shares that there have been personality apps on social media websites that may be extracting personal information from Facebook users and participants of the quizzes, similar to what had happened in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Some of the information that might be extracted from you are vital data about your email addresses and bank accounts.

You allow them to do so by typing down some information about yourself such as your full name and birthday. You may also have been giving them permission to access your location, to collect data about who your friends are, and what you and your friends have recently liked.

Facebook has already pledged to “crack down” on social media personality quiz apps that extract such information by limiting “the app developers’ access to user data,” CNN reported. These apps will be subjected “to heightened scrutiny.”

Furthermore, Facebook will also impose that apps cannot ask for data “that doesn’t improve the user experience.”

This strategy may not totally curb the problem on data privacy, but it is a good initiative to protect unknowing users who only wish to entertain themselves.

Most of all, users must become media literate, be vigilant, and skeptic about what apps to use on Facebook, what permissions to give to the apps they use, and what information to type down on the internet.

(rizsunio@gmail.com)

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