Have you heard about the Take This Lollipop site yet?  I saw a post about it on one of our programmers’ Facebook pages and like a greedy little kid, I took the lollipop without even stopping to think about it.

And I kind of regretted it.

I didn’t even know what the site was or who was behind it, yet I granted it access to my Facebook page and watched as an interactive horror-esque video started playing with me as the star.

It began with a video of a very grimy cyberstalker pulling up my Facebook page and looking at my pictures as well as my friends’ status updates. Paired with creepy sound effects and the fact that the cyberstalker was sweating, caressing my pictures, rubbing the computer mouse, and alternating between laughing and almost salivating, I have to say, I was a bit freaked out.

I even had to watch as this creeper looked up my geographic location on Google Maps (thanks, Facebook), but I’m happy to say he got it a bit wrong. He thinks I live in downtown Phoenix and I hope it stays that way.
When the video was over, the first thing I did was make sure my doors were locked and then I thought about the irony of it. We share so much personal information online every single day that getting a stalker like the one in Take this Lollipop isn’t really even all that far-fetched.

Was this the point of creating Take This Lollipop? Perhaps. Director Jason Zada is behind the intriguing, yet disturbing interactivevideo and he had this to say:

“All of this is in good fun and I think that it was important for me not to violate peoples’ trust at the end of the day but to make them feel uneasy at least for … two minutes. I think we want ways of doing things faster and easier and I think that that button – that little button that says ‘Connect withFacebook’ – just seems to be a very easy thing for people to click and I felt with this, especially, ‘What would it take for somebody totake that bait and click that?”

Regardless of the point of Take This Lollipop, I think it’s a good reminder that  most of us don’t exactly practice safe cybersurfing like we should. Maybe we should all share a little less and not be so eager to “check-in” so everyone knows where we are 24 hours a day.

So … what do you think? Are you going to Take This Lollipop or go update your privacy features on Facebook instead?

Photo (Source)