We all get them, and send them, the benign social questionnaire, often titled harmless things like "Getting to Know You", or such. In truth many times they are merely that, harmless questionnaires, but they have the potential for great harm, to you, your personal information, and family. For the most part they are fun, people enjoy doing them, and sending them. Most of the time they come with the heading "Fill this out and send it back to me", therein is one of the problems.
Let us examine a questionnaire. Here are several sample questions common in most e-mailed social questionnaires.
- What is your favorite Television show?
- What is your favorite Movie?
- If you could go anywhere in the world where would it be?
- Have you ever gone skinny dipping?
- What celebrity would you most like to meet?
- What was your first pets name?
- What is your current pets name?
- Would you rather be too hot, or too cold?
- If something happened to your spouse, would you marry again?
- Do you know how your parents met?
- What is your mothers maiden name?
- What is your favorite thing to eat on a hot day?
Most questionnaires are much longer of course, this is only a short example to point out some common, dangerous questions. First remember somebody sent you this questionnaire with the message to fill it out and return it to them, sometimes people get so many forwards of this type they don't always pay attention to who it is from, they simply enjoy filling it out. Often you are also instructed to forward it to others on your mailing list. People enjoy answering and sending them back and do not always think beyond that point.
Let us look at some of the questions above, most are safe to answer, but some are dangerous. Numbers 6, 7, and 11, are the high risk ones. Often these are answers given to secret questions given when you cannot recall your password. So in effect you have given somebody your e-mail address and the codeword to get the actual password. Also sometimes people use these answers themselves as their passwords. So you have just given a stranger access to your e-mail account, and maybe more.
From your e-mail account they may have access to your Pay Pal or other on-line functions you preform. They may even have access to your bank account and anything else you have passwords and Internet access for.
If they fail to get the answer they want, all they have to do is send you another fun questionnaire with the right questions on it, cleverly hid as entertainment. Now, I am not suggestion you forgo filling out any fun questionnaires in the future, I only recommend that you check who they are from, and if you are replying to more than one source when you return the filled out e-mail. Also be keen to spot these potentially invasive questions. I am sure most of the time the senders are harmless, but you never want to be caught off guard by hitting the one that is not.
Another tip is to remove these questions from any forwards you get, so that you save your friends any potential grief.
