Regardless of the current situation going on in the world, we can all agree on that since the development of smartphones and having entertainment accessible on the palm of your hand, social media has been our favorite past time activity.
The connection between social media, online services, and other sites that require registration is that all of them, regardless of what it is, collect your personal data and often sell them to third-party companies for profit.
Want to create #quizzes without sharing #data? There is a solution and it's called the #Forminator plugin! Click To TweetNow, this sounds terrible, we know, but the general gist of things is that the information relayed is used for marketing purposes. Remember googling where you can get a certain piece of furniture, and not a minute later Facebook was blasting you with “personalized” ads about IKEA? That is a perfect example of what we are trying to say!
Most companies work together, and in unity form the ads they think you want to see, which isn’t entirely bad. However, there are times when the data collecting crosses the line. With the sheer amount of online forms in which you’re required to input your information, it is not entirely surprising that some of them go beyond harmless collecting of information required for you to purchase a product.
How is quiz data shared
Unless the website you’re visiting has created a GDPR compliant quiz, the chances are that whatever you submit can and possibly will be collected. Now, how bad can this really be?
Certainly taking a funny personality quiz, or “Answer 5 Questions And We’ll Guess Which Star Wars Character You Are” quiz can do no harm? Well, the truth is, there is a lot that can be taken out of harmless looking quizzes like that, and the damage done can only be seen once you’ve already been hacked.
For example, there was a case where hackers exploited this by using a Facebook quiz in order to attempt guessing the users’ login security questions. To put this into more perspective, a person who is regularly using online sites and services can easily have over 20 or more profiles, each with their own password and login information, which can sometimes be the same password and email.
In cases where the quiz isn’t taken on Facebook itself but is rather just connected to your Google account, the data mining never stops. Quiz developers continue to use your information when creating more content, keeping a connection with you for months, so they can repeatedly request information regarding your profile, and posting habits from Facebook.
This could potentially harm the ones on your friend list, even if they didn’t consent to their information being used and shared, as the app was given permission to see their information up until 2018. While some of these permissions were restricted, removed, or overall banned, sharing your personal information online in a lighthearted manner could still make you an easy target.
Can you protect your quiz data
To touch base on what we previously mentioned, some websites have gone the long road and made their quizzes GDPR compliant, making them more secure than the ones you’d see made by Buzzfeed or some other website.
However, GDPR compliance does not extend to all countries of the world, so not all developers are required to make their quizzes safe enough, and promise not to give out your information to other sites. Even Google, who claims that it will not, and does not sell your information to advertisers, has the ability to collect your information over Google Surveys. So much so, that third-party companies can get paid by Google itself if the users of the original site use the surveys and take part in them.
To secure themselves from getting into a lot of trouble, this is generally disclosed as “collecting, processing, and analyzing data in order to provide clients with statistics, charts, information, etc.”. When put that way, it doesn’t look like anything that can potentially put you in a bad spot, especially if done in a secure environment where the only purpose of doing so is to improve a service or customize what you’re seeing to your needs.
Doing so is not illegal, and has become such a common practice that end users don’t even think about that going on in the background.
For some, the need to be on top of what they’re sharing has always been there, making sure their profiles are private and taking the time to read what the website is disclosing in their privacy statements, which is a good way to get to know what is being done with your information. Users like that are also more inclined to only visit their trusted websites, or drop the ones they know are using their data as virtual currency.
So, is there something that can be done in order to secure your users’ privacy? If you’re a WordPress blogger, creator, writer, etc., and you wish to make quizzes that will not take advantage of your user’s data, there is a way you can do so.
A group of developers took matters seriously and created the perfect plugin for making quizzes, forms, and polls all while keeping data secure. Of course, we’re talking about the Forminator plugin!
Creating quizzes with the Forminator plugin
The Forminator plugin collects all the data inputted on your website, without sharing it to third-party developers or companies, making the data your own. The best thing is? It’s free and comes with tons of features that can be put to more uses than just building a quiz.
Of course, since we’re talking about quiz security, it is important to say that it is GDPR compliant, so by default, it will only collect the minimum amount of data, and only the data that it needs. Your users will be able to enjoy your content without the constant worry of their information being shared or relayed to someone else, especially to Google or Facebook who are known to sell that information.
Now, how would one go about using this plugin? Once you set it up, the Forminator tab will show up on your dashboard, giving you an overview of the forms/quizzes/polls you’ve created so far, including the number of forms/quizzes/polls, their conversion rates, your most shared quizzes, and so on.
This has proven to be very useful since the plugin tells you which quiz is getting the biggest amount of love, and you can take that information for next time you’re creating a new one.
The plugin and what it creates are made to look clean and neat, with no fuss or frills in terms of design, but the design is not set in stone. So if you already have a theme going around on your website, you can choose multiple themes for the appearance of your forms/quizzes/polls, meaning you don’t have to stick to the basic one.
But what about the actual quiz creating process? The developers took their time to make the quiz settings very easy to manage, so once you being to create one, you will get to pick if you want it to be a “Personality” or a “Knowledge” quiz.
This is also pretty handy in case you’re looking into making a survey without hassling with another plugin that has the same function.
When you chose the “Personality” option, you get to name the quiz, add an image, and provide a description for it.
If the quiz you’re making has multiple end results, you can easily make a ladder-type of configuration that will change depending on the results, giving different outcomes for different answers.
And as for the “Knowledge” quiz, creating it is as straightforward as the other one. Once you’ve created your questions, you can input the correct answer, or answers if what you’re asking has multiple correct responses.
In the end, the users who interacted with this quiz will see how good, or bad, they did on the quiz.
Once you’re all finished with creating your quizzes, publishing them will only take a few moments. The plugin uses shortcodes, so all you have to do is copy the shortcode for your new quiz and paste it in the editor. If you’re using Gutenberg, you will love to hear that the plugin also provides a block you can use to manipulate the forms.
All in all, in terms of creating a quiz, so far we haven’t managed to find a single plugin that hits all of our check marks like this one does. With so many features, secure data, and overall handiness this one takes the cake. Even though it is fairly new on the market, its popularity has been on a rise considering it’s free, and anyone needing to create forms/quizzes/polls can benefit from it.
Other features of Forminator
Quizzes are just one of the many things this plugin can create. And regardless if you’re in need of creating payment forms, calculations, polls, whatever, you can build it with this plugin.
It’s important to note that everything created with Forminator is safe, so there isn’t a single form you can make that could possibly put data at risk.
The integration with other plugins also works perfectly, so if you’re using them to manage your website, there is no need to worry that anything will go wrong.
Even in the rare case of something being a bit off with this plugin, the devs seem to take care of it pretty quickly, and the community around it is there to provide you with support as well.
This plugin is truly a powerhouse when it comes to all its features and uses, and we’ve only highlighted the most amusing ones. And out of all the plugins currently on the market, Forminator will really have everything covered, so you might see yourself removing the current form builder you’re using in order to use the free version of this plugin.
Conclusion
Forminator is a great plugin that ensures you get to create the forms/quizzes/polls you need all while keeping everything bound and safe on your website.
It’s perfect for anyone out there in need of a form/quiz/poll building plugin, so we recommend it to all WordPress content creators that want to get out there and provide something interactive for their viewers.
If we are being honest, we’re really not surprised with how popular this plugin is, and all the great reviews it’s been getting. So if you’re interested, give it a try, we’re sure you won’t regret it!