Have you ever seen those quizzes on social media – the ones that ask you a bunch of seemingly lighthearted questions? “What was the name of your favourite teacher?”; “What was the first city you lived in?”; “What’s your favourite meal?” OR you see a post that says, “Your stage name is a combination of the name of your first pet and your grandmother’s maiden name.” Thousands of people across the globe give their answers for thousands more people to see. What’s worrying is that the intention, which is behind asking these questions to the unsuspecting public, is less than innocent and lighthearted.

While I was teaching one of my cyber safety classes the other day, someone admitted that he had received a message on social media offering him money to answer a bunch of questions. The only catch was that he had to give his bank details, in order to get paid. He was a teenager without his own bank account, so he decided to go ahead and give one of his parent’s bank details, along with all his answers to the quiz. Guess what?! He actually got paid. Pretty cool, eh?!

NO. NO. NO. NOT COOL AT ALL. This is one of many online scams.

Here is what actually happens. The person behind the scam takes those bank details, along with your answers, and then calls your bank pretending to be you. This person has all those answers to the frivolous questions, remember! These are typically the very security questions that banks ask us, in order to prove we are indeed who we say we are. So why would the scammer bother giving you a little money in the first place? Well, it locks you into a false sense of security – the offer must be legit! What do you do when you believe an offer is real? You post it on your social media pages and you pass it on to all your contacts in your phone. You are serving the scammer so well that you don’t even realise you’re essentially helping the scammer to scam hundreds of other people, or more, as the chain will simply keep going and going.

What about when you are signing up for a new online account? What details do you give? Your email, your phone number, or a third party account with which to sign in? With these options available, which sounds safer? The third party sign in option is usually with your Facebook or Google account. Sounds pretty simple. You won’t have to give out your email, nor phone number, and you won’t have yet another username and password to remember. Before you know it, you are signing in to all these wonderfully useful platforms through your Facebook and/or Google accounts. What a breeze, eh?!

NO. NO. NO. NOT A BREEZE AT ALL. You have now connected all your new accounts to the big accounts you depend on for many of your online needs.

Has your Instagram account ever been hacked? You couldn’t get into it because someone literally took it over? It’s concerning, of course, but at least it’s only one account. But is it only one account? NO.

Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook are all owned by the same people. These are connected. Remember you have been signing into all those other online accounts through your Facebook login? Now someone has hacked into your Instagram. So, what do you think the potential outcome of this could be? NOT GOOD.

If this does happen to you, go into your Facebook account immediately and change the password in settings (How to keep your account secure). Go into every single one of your other settings and make everything private, or choose the “Only Me” option. Ensure that you go into data settings and remove every app and website, which you’ve signed in with Facebook, or any that you have recently used. Just delete all of them. To be on the safe side, go into your Google account and change your password. If any family member’s account is connected to yours, change those passwords as well. Pick passwords that are long phrases, which are easy for you to remember, but ensure you use a combination of lowercase and uppercase letters, as well as numbers and symbols.

There are countless more ways in which people online can trick us all. We must each be vigilant and, when we see offers, ask ourselves if we know the person or company that is making the offer. Scams are vague and usually get passed down through a long chain of ‘forwards’. Scams do not identify with a reputable and known company. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. If it looks like a fun and frivolous questionnaire, seemingly harmless, it is HARMFUL. Don’t let these scammers take you for a fool. Don’t participate in these scams. Don’t ‘share’ these scams. How about a ‘NO’ to sharing the foolishness.