Tech Monk » News

New Facebook Password Reset Scam – Beware, Don’t Download the Attachment

Pramodh KP — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:56:34 +0000

There is a new scam going on right now on the wec. If you get an email saying “Facebook Password Reset” with an attachement included, don’t even think of touching it! It’s a scam which spreads malware into the systems.

I was a victim of this scam yesterday, and I had even posted a twitter tweet. Let me tell you, I even downloaded the zipped attachment and opened it. I was expecting a .doc file or a .txt file. But, to my astonishment, there was a .exe file! I closed and deleted the .zip file immediately! Phew! Saved.

Here is a screenshot of how the email looks like.

Check the higlighted areas in the mail. Click to enlarge

At first, I knew it was some kinda scam thing but didn’t post about it. But today, I saw a post on Cnet that reported about this scam. It said that the attachment contains some password stealer that can steal the users password and username. This is what McAfee has to say about the scam:

“This threat is potentially very dangerous considering that there are over 350 million Facebook users who could fall for this scam,” McAfee says. “This is also the sixth most prevalent piece of malware targeting consumers in the last 24 hours, as tracked by McAfee Labs.”

There are many reasons why this can be called as a phishing scam. First of all, it came into my spam box and not my inbox. So, that’s a reason for suspicion. Next, the “To” address was different. It was “pram6176″ which was not my email id at all! There was a .exe file in the attachment – why would that be needed??

Some things that Cnet noticed: The punctuations are not correct – “Facebook” isn’t capitalised in the email. Facebook would never send an email with an attachment – It would have pointed to a link where one could reset password.

So, beware all 350 million users, THIS IS A SCAM.

Google Celebrates Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics By Its New Doodle

Pramodh KP — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:41:11 +0000

As you all know Google celebrates many big events by changing its logo. Today, Google has changed its logo to a different one which has a diver in his diving suit. Save this logo onto your desktop if you liked it!

The new doodle for winter Olympics from Google

Google’s Real Time Search Increases Twitter Traffic By 9%

Pramodh KP — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:40:24 +0000

Google very recently launched real-time search which included Twitter tweets about the hot news that was going on. A research by Digital Beat on this new integration has revealed that there has been a increase of traffic for the social networking site, Twitter.

comScore: Graph analyses the traffic

The statistics from ComScore show that there has been a little increase in traffic than the normal traffic that the social networking site was getting usually. In January this year, Twitter got 21.79 million unique visitors which was pretty much higher than that of 21.25 million visitors (calculated on July 2009). There was a 3.1 percent increase in the traffic, in December when compared with the traffic in the previous month. So, the real time search which was introduced on December 7 has caused a great impact on Twitter’s traffic.

Experian Hitwise collects some data on this aspect. The graph above shows the increase in the traffic that is driven to Twitter through Google. There has been a 9% increase in the traffic that Twitter got from Google in the time period of December 5th to February 13th.

[Image Source]

3 Changes That Might Save Google Buzz From Becoming #Fail

Pramodh KP — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:26:11 +0000

Google Buzz has got varied responses from the public. While some people are busy comparing stats of Google Buzz with other leading other sites such as Facebook and Twitter, some other people are trying to list out ‘n’ number of factors which will result in failure of the product. After the release of Google Buzz, one thing that has been discussed a lot is about the lack of privacy it provides to the user. But finally, Google Buzz has taken a step forward in protecting the privacy of its users by implementing 3 good changes.

Auto-Follow Is Abandoned

This was one of the positive points for Google Buzz. People could easily get started with Google Buzz. When I started with Google Buzz, I was following about 35+ people. But, for people who are getting Google Buzz feature now, will not have the auto-follow feature. Instead they will be asked to follow people whom they know. Like the following image. Now, that’s a good change!

Auto-Integration Of Picasa And Google Reader

Yes, even this is removed. When I joined the Buzz, two sites were already connected – Picasa and Google Reader. This surely invades the privacy of a person. Even this has been removed in order to protect the privacy of its users. This can also be seen in the above picture itself.

Also Read: How To Access Gmail In Google Wave

Buzz Settings Now Integrated In Gmail Settings

Didn’t like Google Buzz? You think it’s a disturbance in your account. You think it invades your privacy. No need to follow that long tutorial to hide Google Buzz. Google Buzz team has added this option in the Gmail settings to hide the label “Buzz” from your account!

Now, with these changes Google has certainly protected the privacy of its users to a certain extent. But what about this flaw? We have to wait and see what Google does about this!