“YOUR PASSWORD HAS BEEN RESET. PLEASE OPEN THE ATTACHMENT AND RETRIEVE IT”- A concerned statement by Facebook or potentially catastrophic bait?

If you receive such an email from Facebook then let me warn you of a scam. It is the infamous Password Reset Scam! A scam which has been targeted towards more than 350 million Facebook customers, worldwide!

The attachment in the mail is actually a Password reader. If you click on the link to open the attachment, the password reader steals your Facebook password and gets access to all your vital information. And if you think ‘that’s it?’, then you haven’t really understood the potential damage that the password reader has been devised to create. The password stealer has been designed to target Windows computers. It copies all Username-Password combinations that have ever been used on the computer and passes it on to the hackers. The sensitive information that the hackers have laid their hands on is used to access your bank accounts, credit card accounts, loans, investments and a whole lot of information that you have always dreaded to share.

But, the scam is pretty easy to figure out. Firstly, Facebook never sends across such mails containing a link on which the user needs to click and reset the password. Secondly, poor grammar and awkward phrases used in the mail would clearly mark and testify that the writer is a novice and not a professional spokesperson of Facebook. Thirdly, Facebook never appears as capitalized in salutation.

I would advise you to beware of the scam and if you ever receive such a mail, please report it immediately to the Facebook team. Raise an alarm!

Also, please share across the information with all your friends and people whom you are concerned for.

Take care.