Internet Safety
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40 free Internet Safety trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Most online trouble starts with a person being fooled, not a computer being broken into. A message that looks like it came from a bank, a prize that needs a small fee first, a stranger in a chat who is not who they claim to be: the tricks are old, and the internet only made them faster. Knowing how they work is the best defence there is. This quiz covers the ground a family or classroom would want: how to separate a safe message from a scam, what makes a login hard to break, the kinds of harmful software and how each one spreads, what photos and posts reveal about the people who share them, and how to stay safe in chats and on social media. A few questions look at the laws that protect children online and at well-known attacks and data leaks. It is pitched for older children, teenagers, parents and teachers, and works as a classroom warm-up or a family challenge at home. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something useful.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which tech billionaire was photographed in 2016 with tape covering the webcam and microphone jack of his laptop?
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg gave the habit away by accident in a post celebrating Instagram's half a billion users. Covering the lens stops spyware from watching through it.
Q 02Unwanted bulk email takes its name from which canned meat, chanted over and over in a Monty Python sketch?
Spam
Spam is repeated so relentlessly in the sketch that it drowns out everything else, which is how early internet users felt about junk messages flooding their inboxes.
Q 03What name for luring someone with a fake online identity comes from a 2010 documentary featuring Nev Schulman?
Catfishing
Catfishing took its name from a story told in the film about catfish shipped with live cod, and spread widely in 2013 when football star Manti Te'o was deceived.
Q 04Which web company admitted in 2017 that a 2013 hack had exposed all three billion of its user accounts?
Yahoo
Yahoo had first put the damage at one billion accounts in December 2016, then tripled the figure ten months later.
Q 05Which password topped SplashData's Worst Passwords List for 2016, making up 4% of all those surveyed?
123456
123456 alone accounted for one in every 25 passwords surveyed, and the 25 most common entries together covered more than a tenth.
Q 06The '419' advance-fee email scam, often sent in a prince's name, is numbered after which country's criminal code?
Nigeria
Nigeria covers fraud in section 419 of its code, but the trick is much older: it echoes the 'Spanish Prisoner' letters of the late 1700s.
Q 07Which country passed a law in 2024 banning under-16s from holding social media accounts, the first of its kind?
Australia
Australia put the burden on the platforms, not on families: companies that fail to keep under-16s off face fines, and the ban took effect in December 2025.
Q 08Which video chat site that paired strangers at random closed in 2023 after a lawsuit over child safety?
Omegle
Omegle was launched in 2009 by Leif K-Brooks, whose farewell message thanked the person who sued for opening his eyes to the site's human cost.
Q 09During the 2020 lockdowns, what name was given to strangers gatecrashing online video meetings to disrupt them?
Zoombombing
Zoombombing was modelled on the word photobombing and first appeared in mid-March 2020, just as schools and offices moved their meetings online.
Q 10Which type of malware poses as a harmless program and relies on the victim to install it?
Trojan horse
Trojan horse programs can't spread by themselves as viruses do. Like the Greeks' ruse, they need the victim to carry them inside, often as a free download.
Q 11Which scam, documented on AOL in 1995, uses fake emails from trusted names to trick people into revealing logins?
Phishing
Phishing owes its spelling to 'phreaking', the older hobby of hacking phone lines. On AOL, early attackers posed as staff and asked members for their passwords.
Q 12The US Federal Trade Commission warns that no real business or agency will ever demand payment in which form?
Gift cards
Gift cards are a scammer's favourite: callers are rushed into buying Google Play, Apple or Amazon cards and reading out the numbers on the back.
Q 13Microsoft says its genuine error messages never include which detail, a hallmark of tech support scam pop-ups?
A phone number
Q 21What name is given to headlines and thumbnails that exploit a 'curiosity gap' to lure readers into following a link?
Clickbait
Clickbait teases just enough to make readers curious but not enough to satisfy them, and the page behind it often fails to deliver what was promised.
Q 22What name is given to fake pop-up virus warnings that pressure people into paying for useless security software?
Scareware
Scareware plays on shock and anxiety: a web page claims the computer is infected, then offers a fake antivirus program as the paid cure.
Q 23Which type of app keeps every login in a locked vault that opens with one master passphrase?
Password manager
A phone number in a pop-up leads to a fake help desk, where the caller is talked into paying or letting a stranger take remote control of the computer.
Q 14What kind of malware holds a victim's files hostage until a payment, usually in cryptocurrency, is handed over?
Ransomware
Ransomware usually arrives as a booby-trapped email attachment, though the 2017 WannaCry outbreak jumped between computers with no click needed.
Q 15Which word for AI-forged video or audio of a real person began as a Reddit username in late 2017?
Deepfake
Deepfake blends 'deep learning' with 'fake'. The Reddit forum that grew up around the name shared face-swapped clips, including many that put Nicolas Cage into other actors' films.
Q 16Which snack names the small data file, devised by Netscape's Lou Montulli, that websites store in a visitor's browser?
Cookie
Cookie was borrowed from 'magic cookie', Unix programmers' name for a packet of data that a program receives and hands back unchanged.
Q 17Which website test, named in 2003 by Luis von Ahn and colleagues, makes visitors prove they are human?
CAPTCHA
CAPTCHA is a contrived acronym with 'Turing test' in the middle; its twisted letters and picture grids are meant to be easy for people and hard for software.
Q 18Withdrawing cash from an ATM is a classic case of two-factor authentication: a bank card plus which second proof?
A PIN code
A PIN code is something the user knows and the card something the user has; a thief needs both, which is why a stolen password alone can't open a two-factor account.
Q 19Which creature of Scandinavian folklore shares its name with people who post inflammatory messages online?
Troll
Troll behaviour feeds on attention and reactions, which is the thinking behind the long-standing advice simply to ignore it.
Q 20What name is given to the active or passive trail of traceable data that a person's online activity leaves behind?
Digital footprint
A digital footprint has a passive side as well as what a person chooses to post: data left behind involuntarily, simply by being online.
A password manager can also invent a different random login for every site, so the user never has to memorise them and one leak doesn't unlock the rest.
Q 24Which Google setting, often locked on across school networks, filters explicit content out of its results?
SafeSearch
SafeSearch also powers child-friendly search engines such as Kiddle and KidzSearch, which pass every query through Google's filter.
Q 25In Childnet's SMART rules for children online, which R-word warns that not everything on a screen can be trusted?
Reliable
Reliable is the R; the other letters stand for safe, meet, accepting and tell, the last meaning to speak to a trusted adult when something feels wrong.
Q 26What two-word name is given to stealing a passcode by watching it typed, even through binoculars or hidden cameras?
Shoulder surfing
Shoulder surfing needs no hacking skill at all, which is why cash machine keypads are often fitted with privacy shields.
Q 27Which worm of May 2000 spread through email attachments and infected millions of Windows PCs around the world?
ILOVEYOU
ILOVEYOU was written by a college dropout in the Philippines and mailed itself to every contact in each victim's address book.
Q 28What term describes tricking people, not machines, into revealing secrets, as hacker Kevin Mitnick famously did?
Social engineering
Social engineering works on trust and pressure instead of code; Kevin Mitnick used it in phone and computer break-ins around Los Angeles from the late 1970s.
Q 29Which security method, used by WhatsApp and Signal, means only the sender and recipient can read a message?
End-to-end encryption
End-to-end encryption shuts out the messaging company too: the provider carrying the chat cannot decrypt it, even when asked to.
Q 30Smartphone photos often carry hidden Exif data that can reveal which private detail about each picture?
Where it was taken
Where it was taken is stored as coordinates inside the image file, a privacy risk that can be avoided by stripping the data with a metadata removal tool.