By Carol Blair Vaughn

Facebook Quizzes – what an entertaining and harmless way to spend an evening at home in Costa Rica, especially now that darkness falls sooner.

A new quiz which went viral last week, “What Are Your Most Used Words on Facebook”, enticed 17.5 million people to try it out online, according to The Los Angeles Times. The app was created by a South Korean company named Vonvon, and it creates a word cloud for you based on your past status messages, with your most frequently used words appearing larger and in the center of the cloud.

How fun, right? Somewhat insightful, somewhat artistic, seems totally benign.

But hold on their, sport. In order to complete the quiz, you must give the app permission to collect:

~ Name, profile picture, age, sex, birthday, and all other public information.

~ Entire friend list.

~ All timeline posts.

~ All photos.

~ Your educational history.

~ Both hometown and current city of residence.

~ Your likes.

~ Your IP address.

And this data can be stored on Vonvon’s servers anywhere in the world, including countries whose internet laws are lax or nonexistent.

Vonvon’s CEO Jonghwa Kim told Sophos Security Co. that private data is not sold to advertisers, but is used only for generating the word cloud. Hmmmmm.

Vonvon is Jonghwa’s third start-up, having previously begun and sold a travel blogging website called Wingbus, and a social e-commerce website called Dailypick. They both sold the same year for about $9 million. Vonvon currently employs over 40 editors, according to Forbes Magazine, who create the online quizzes, which are monetized by display ads.

Last week, Paul Bischoff of Comparitech, a tech comparison and research group wrote of the Most Used Word App, “The app, like many Facebook quiz apps, is a privacy nightmare.” He says his main concern is the privacy policy users agree to before its use, which allows Vonvon to continue to access information even after you stop using the app. Vonvon maintains it has no intention to use or sell your information, despite asking you to sign the privacy policy giving them that right.

There are some 250,000 Ticos on Facebook, according to El Financiero, or 28.9 of Costa Rica’s population. We are just behind Guatemala in Facebook usage, but ahead of our neighbors Panama and Nicaragua. And of course, this app works in Spanish (Cuales Son Las Palabras Que Mas Usaste en Facebook en 2015), and 307,894 folks have completed the quiz in Spanish.

But how many of us took the time to carefully read the privacy policy, in Spanish or in English, in order to just complete a fun quiz about words? And please note that your word cloud will not appear unless you provide all the information requested.

Comparitech cautions us all to think twice before we take this quiz. Once you have completed it, there’s no way to pull out or change your information.

You are advised to review your Facebook app settings from time to time. Check which apps have authorized access to your public information under the “Logged in with Facebook” section of the Facebook Application Settings.

It would seem that a quiz we didn’t even have to study for, could end up flunking us out anyway.

About the Author

Carol Blair Vaughn holds a Master’s Degree in Performing Arts and is a retired college professor from Washington, D.C. She inherited her love for Latin America from her father, the former U.S. Ambassador
to Colombia, Panama, and Director of the Peace Corps, Jack Vaughn. Carol writes for the Association of Residents of Costa Rica (ARCR) and for an English language club in the southern region of Costa Rica. In the past, Carol served as Editor in Chief of What’s on Tap magazine.