The 'Most Used Words' Facebook Quiz App Accused Of Data Stealing

Over 18 million Facebook users have tried out an app called “What Are Your Most Used Words on Facebook?” recently. The “What Are Your Most Used Words on Facebook?” app — which was created by a South Korean company named Vonvon — displays a "word cloud" based on your frequently used words in past status messages. The most frequently used words in status messages appear larger and towards the center of the word cloud. “What Are Your Most Used Words on Facebook?” sounds like it is a harmless and fun app to try out, but UK-based VPN company Comparitech warns that it is a “privacy nightmare.”

When a Facebook user signs up to use the app, he or she agrees to give the “What Are Your Most Used Words on Facebook?” app permission to collect your IP address, profile picture, age, friends list, posts, posts you are tagged in, birthday, education history, hometown, likes, photos and more. And this data can be stored on Vonvon's servers anywhere across the world.

“We may continue to use any non-personally-identifying information in accordance with this Privacy Policy (e.g., for the purpose of analysis, statistics and the like) also after the termination of your membership to this WebSite and\or use of our services, for any reason whatsoever,” says Vonvon’s privacy policy. “Vonvon processes Personal Information on its servers in many countries around the world. Such information may be stored on any of our servers, at any location.”

However, Vonvon CEO Jonghwa told Sophos that private data is not stored on company servers, nor is data sold to advertisers. He said that the information is only used for generating results. Kim added that the results of “Word Cloud” is generated in the user’s web browser. “As we do not store any personal information, we have nothing to sell. Period,” said Kim.

In an interview with VentureBeat, Kim said Vonvon is his third startup. Previously he sold a travel blogging website called Wingbus and a social e-commerce website called Dailypick for $9 million in the same year. Vonvon has raised $3 million in funding led by Altos Ventures. And Vonvon has over 40 editors that creates the online quizzes, which are monetized by display ads. Vonvon also makes money by selling branded quizzes on behalf of corporations.

Regardless of how you feel about privacy policies in general, it is good practice to review your Facebook app settings from time-to-time. You can see which apps have authorized access to your public information under the “Logged in with Facebook” section of the Facebook Application Settings. When you hover the cursor over an icon, you will have an option to remove authorization or edit settings for that corresponding app.

Have you used the “What Are Your Most Used Words on Facebook?” quiz app? What are your thoughts? Please leave a comment!