wayne on November 15, 2008 

Well, I found yet another quiz site that has requested my email address at the end of the quiz, however this time I found a way to get the results without giving them anything.  Here's how I did it, so you can too.

The site HeyQuiz.com gives a whole bunch of quizzes, but like the BoredQuiz I tried, they ask for an email address before giving you the results of the quiz.  However, when I sat staring blankly at the email request page, considering tempting the fates, I noticed something about the URL.  This is what it looked like:

http://mingle2.com/user/step1?nexturl=http://www.heyquiz.com/quiz/cat_kill40

Notice anything about that URL?  I did, the "nexturl=" is what is known as a querystring parameter.  It's used to pass information from one page to the next.  You might have seen these in some of the widgets you use on your blog, or just about anywhere on the Internet.  I also noticed that they have different names for the 'nexturl'.  Names such as 'desturl' (destination url) and the like are quite common.

In this querystring, the nexturl parameter can be extracted and placed directly into the address bar on your browser to navigate to the 'next url', whatever that may be.  In this particular case, it happens to be the results page I was looking for.

So, without giving them any information, you are able to take any number of their quizzes and get the results, without the fear of being bombarded by spam after doing so.

This is just bad programming on the web developers part, and I wonder how long it will take them to correct it.  Especially now that more people will know about it.  :)

This is all I wanted to know:

HeyQuiz isn't so bad however.  I tried a few others and sometimes they'll provide a link that will 'take you straight to the results', which is nice.  However they are associated with sites that just want to grab your email address and exploit that to sell you stuff, or simply bug you with spam emails.

If any site requests an email address before they give you anything, think twice.  They may just provide that little something something for the sole purpose of getting your email address, and not give a damn about providing any real value to you.

Surf Safe!  And by the way, I have two cats...

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