• Scammers Target Facebook Users Again

    Scammers Target Facebook Users Again

    Techtree News Staff, Mar 18, 2010 1711 hrs IST

    Beware of email alerting you of Facebook password change

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With great power comes great responsibility. This quote is ideal for an ever-growing social networking site like Facebook, which has a user base that is increasing by the day. However, on the flip side, this means more and more people are vulnerable to hacking and phishing scams.

While Facebook has always been susceptible to these threats, this time around, scammers have set off a new Password Reset scam. Scammers send emails that appear to be from Facebook, telling recipients that their Facebook password has been reset and they need to click on an attachment to retrieve it.

So, how does the whole scam work? The attachment is a password stealer that installs when the user clicks on it. Once installed, the password stealer can potentially access any username and password combination utilized on that computer, not just for the user's Facebook account.


Also Read: Social Networks Under Increased Threat in 2010


This threat is potentially very dangerous considering that there are over 400 million Facebook users who could fall for this scam. This is also the sixth most prevalent piece of malware targeting consumers in the last 24 hours, as tracked by McAfee.

McAfee assures that Facebook would never send an email alerting a user that they changed his or her password. Another clue that can signal a user has received a spam email is the use of poor grammar and awkward phrases such as, "Dear user of facebook."

Here is an email example of the Facebook Password Reset Scam to watch out for:

 



How can you avoid becoming a Facebook scam victim? First of all, do not open the attachment. Promptly delete the Facebook scam email. Secondly, install a good anti-virus in your PC to keep these scams at bay.

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Discussion Board
(3) Comments
john
,Delhi, on Oct 18, 2010 03:37 PM
my name is John, am so disappointed in the India government not been able to fight internet crime, most of the scammers are here in India, doing all kind of things to make money through the internet, i advice the government to begin investigate how they buy there sim, internet connection, and they mostly use the jobs site to extract emails, such as times jobs, monster, nukri etc.....the India police should wake up and do there job, and stop conspiring with them.
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Kaushik
,Bangalore, on Mar 19, 2010 03:38 PM
This has nothing to do with facebook per se. The same modus operandi is used by faking emails from banks or any financial sites.
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bob
,calgary, on Mar 18, 2010 05:56 PM
YELP, a public review site also slips in a page requesting your email password, it's optional in tiny lettering, but this is a suspicious request that many may think is required for sign up.
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