When the user sees the image, wherever it may be, it's like it is screaming out at them and asking, "Would you like to play a game?" to which many people are intrigued. But why do these gotcha techniques work so easily? Much like there is a "National Day" for anyone, there's a birthday scenario game for everyone as well.įirst, they are often referred to as games. A quick google image search for "Birthday Scenario" will fill your screen with numerous variations of this simple way to get someone to provide their birthday willingly.
One of my favorite forms of viral media is when the intent of the media is to capture the respondent's birthday. Unfortunately, unless you plan on ridding the world of social media, this viral media is going to continue to persist and likely have victims fall to its trap.Īs mentioned, this viral media doesn't stop at the "National Days." These happen to be abundant and an easy way to get people to buy in on sharing personal information throughout the year. Viral media can be an image, video, text, or other bits of sharable content that end up circulating quickly from person to person. While social engineering can come in many forms, the aspect this blog is referring to is called viral media. Okay, maybe not destroy but at least cause a pretty big headache for those impacted. To make a bad day worse, it's not just the "National Days" that are a part of these plots to destroy the world. To those of you out there who recognized this pitfall, I offer a standing ovation! As the foothold of these (over)sharing platforms has grown throughout time, it has also become more known to most users that someone is going to be using them for evil and causing others to have bad days and not the kind we would celebrate on something like National Bad Day Day (November 19 th). While this had clicked in my head before, seeing so many posts about family members and pets being called out by name I had this eerie feeling creep over my body as I realized that while I may not be the one falling for the ruse of the social engineer, some of my friends and family probably would.ĭuring the rise of social media, many of us probably didn't give much thought as to what we were sharing with others or the implications of that knowledge. That price is the ability for scammers and social engineers to send the same sort of well wishes or even more popularly get others to do it for them!Ī short while back, I noticed a lot of friends sharing posts on their social media telling the world how fantastic their son, daughter, or pet is for National Sons Day (officially March 4 th, often celebrated on September 28 th), National Daughters Day (September 25 th), and National Dogs Day (August 26 th) respectively. Unfortunately, with that ease of sending your friends and family well wishes on National Bathtub Racing Day (July 1 st) comes with a price. Throughout the remainder of this blog, you'll be introduced to various cloaks viral media puts on to conceal itself from its true purpose of collecting people's private information.Īs most of us know, Hallmark is a card company, and what better way to make a buck than to sell a card or cards that people can use for all the various "National Days." Lucky for most of us, the world has gone virtual, which makes it easier to send those people you're thinking about on whatever National Day it is a fun meme, digital card, or tag them in some social media post that shows us all what makes you think about them.
While Marshal Mathers may have been the real Slim Shady and taken off on the music charts, there were plenty of people in the world ready to start charting your personal information through the shady use of viral media. Viral media is digital content that is passed quickly and easily between multiple parties. The rise of social media brought with it a new technique for malicious actors to collect information about more people than they would have considered in the past: Viral Media. Around the time Eminem started asking if he could have our attention, another trend was taking off across the world in the form of Social Media.