This week, a viral "challenge" took Twitter and other social media by storm. The "Florida Man Challenge" called for people to:

Google "Florida Man" and their birthdate,

Find a headline about the activities of a "Florida Man" that matched their birthdate, and

Post that headline to their social media account.

The challenge spread like a cat meme, so much so that typing "Florida Man" into the Google search bar resulted in suggested entries that were almost exclusively calendar dates.



When I walked into the @tb_times newsroom this morning, ALL of the top stories were about #FloridaMan. It was confusing until we realized why: Everyone is googling to see their Florida Man headline. Of course, I wrote about it:https://t.co/nFMWQPbMRT — Gabrielle Calise (@gabriellecalise) March 21, 2019

Doing this was, as we like to say at Ars, a really bad idea.

Sure, if you've locked your social media account down so that only friends can see your posts and information and that information already includes your birth date, this sort of thing is relatively harmless. But if you are posting in response to the Florida Man Challenge publicly, it offers others an opportunity for bad actors to collect information that includes your birthdate—just one more tool they can use to attempt to socially engineer their way into your accounts and other personally identifying or financial data. And once it's out there, it won't go away.

The Florida Man Challenge may have begun as an innocent social experiment; one of the earliest posters on Twitter said she found it in someone's Tumblr account. But there have been similar Twitter memes that have raised suspicion:

My hot take: the tweet going around that asks "Whoever won Best Actress the year you were born is your real Zodiac Sign" is, in fact, a phishing attack to get you to post your personally identifiable information. Later, they'll ask what street you grew up on. — King of Tωitter (@TonyNoland) August 22, 2018

This is going around Facebook just now! Please tell your friends & family not to post their ‘royal name!’

You will be giving them your maiden name, first pet, street or town you were born along with all your other info on there already!

Be #scamaware and please dont respond... pic.twitter.com/xWtNsxH64K — Georgina Woodcock (@GeorginaWoodco) May 29, 2018

There have been plenty of others that were obviously dubious (or were just trolls):

Hey everyone! To ring in the new year, let’s surprise some people with fun facts about you, comment your answers below:

Fav book?

First pet?

First job?

High school you went to?

Street you grew up on?

Mom’s maiden name?

What city were you born in?

Bestie’s name? — gwack gwack slrrrp *spit* slrrp gwack gwack inhale (@FLOTJM) December 31, 2018

Your Ayn Rand Villainous Socialist name is the street you were born on and the first arcane slang term you think of. — Valondar (@VK_HM) April 8, 2017

your rap name is "young" + your mother's maiden name + the city you were born in + name of your pet + name of the street you grew up on — sreekar (@sreekyshooter) August 10, 2017

So, please, tell your friends not to be Florida Man.