Quite a few “quiz” games online are actually data-mining hoping people will reveal their personal information. My sister recently posted on Facebook her suggestions for fake, sarcastic replies. I’ll only give away one as a starting example:
First Job Title: professional fluffer
Mother’s Maiden Name: Gambolputty de von Ausfern-schplenden-schlitter-crasscrenbon-fried-digger-dingle-dangle-dongle-dungle-burstein-von-knacker-thrasher-apple-banger-horowitz-ticolensic-grander-knotty-spelltinkle-grandlich-grumblemeyer-spelterwasser-kurstlich-himbleeisen-bahnwagen-gutenabend-bitte-ein-nürnburger-bratwustle-gerspurten-mitz-weimache-luber-hundsfut-gumberaber-shönedanker-kalbsfleisch-mittler-aucher von Hautkopft of Ulm
Sex: Please!
Remember “The King and I”.
“How old will you be?”
“I’m 134 your majesty.” (OK - so I forgot the exact quote - don’t nitpick.)
When did you graduate High School?
“The Year of the Impoverished Pigeon”
“Who wants to know”
“Same as yours”
“I’ll ask the nurse”
Favorite Color: Skobeloff
And yes its a color.
Your mom. Doesn’t matter what the question is.
What’s your birthdate?
I don’t know, I was too young to remember.
Someone must have told you.
But that’s only hearsay evidence.
SSN: 1
Yeah, I’m old.
[pedantic nitpick]As someone who did it for a living, I must object to the misuse of the term. “Data mining” means to sift through a database (ones own data) looking for patterns and trends. It’s entirely non-nefarious. What’s going on here is…not sure. Phishing, maybe?
Can someone explain the purpose of those posts where they challenge you to name a state without the leter “E” (or a fish without the letter “A”)?
The only useful data I could see coming from that would be ‘friend chaining’, i.e., who’s friends with who. But a lot of that is publicly available.
On Facebook? It’s to get engagement. The more people reply to your content, the more people who Facebook shows it to. This applies both the current post (the one asking the question) and subsequent posts. You repeat this a bit, and you have a larger audience when you put out your ad or scam or whatever.
The trick here is that it’s ever so slightly difficult, in that the first state/fish/etc you think of won’t work. They also usually present it as a challenge, saying X% of people can’t do it, even though anyone obviously can. These two things get a lot of people to reply.
I’ve never replied to ones this simple. But I have replied to other such things, even knowing what they’re for.
It’s an easy way to gin up the traffic on a page or a site. It’s often used to create (apparent) value for a site that is then sold.
ETA: Fine. Ninja’d. But not by a whole lot 
This works surprisingly well in many cases.
I got nothing, but I just want to acknowledge the Al Jaffee reference in the title.