Test Your Gullibility

Have you ever seen the Punch cartoon “Test Your Gullibility?”

A very complacent gentleman is walking up to a quiz machine with his arm outstretched ready to place his penny in the slot.  The machine has an illuminated banner “Test Your Gullibility” with an enormous boxing glove mounted at head level, primed ready for attack.  Take a look at the cartoon – simply Google images for “Test your gullibility” – it’s just perfect, isn’t it.

Is this credible, though?  Would anyone be *that* gullible?

Maybe you consider yourself fairly savvy when dealing with such an obvious booby-trap, but are you so smart when the tests are online?

Are you a sucker for Facebook quizzes?  You know the sort of thing –

“What would your film star name be? – use your pet’s name and mother’s maiden name”

It’s just a bit of harmless fun, right?  Well, wrong, I’m afraid.

By freely giving away your personal information teamed with other data openly displayed on your social media accounts, you have just handed the keys to your online kingdom to a hacker!  They can use this in the form of answers to security questions which could let them reset your password.  It’s even worse if your pet’s name is your favourite password.

As the truism goes: If an offer looks too good to be true, it probably is.  You will come across special offers and bargains every day on X formerly Twitter.  Do you do any background checks before handing over your hard-earned cash?

Another test of your gullibility takes the form of the *phishing* email.  You must click on a link to redeem a free Amazon voucher, perhaps, or maybe you have to provide login details to open an attachment.  There’s always a sense of urgency and a suggestion that the sender cannot be contacted directly so that you forget to be suspicious in your haste.  At first glance, it can look very authentic too.  The hackers are counting on your suspension of disbelief.

The moral of the story: don’t be that man, ready to post your penny into the *gullibility* slot machine.  Get yourself educated about cyber threats and consider implementing some protections; anti-spam filters will stop a lot of malicious emails in their tracks, for example.  If in doubt, get your friendly Computer Troubleshooters to check out the email for you.

Computer Troubleshooters – here to protect you from yourself and the hackers!