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.

If you were using Gmail on a public computer and forgot to sign out of it, then no need to panic, here is a simple and effective way of logging out of the computer remotely form any other computer. You can also check whether the accoun is still active or it has been logged out. Follow the instructions given below.

1. After you log into your Gmail account, you can see at the footer about the last login details there click on the “More Details” link.
2. You will get a pop-up window that contains all your previous account logins. Here it also gives you a choice to sign put of all other sessions, except the one which you are working on.
3. You can also check for your active account logins. These are represented by an * mark on their IP address. However it is blurred in the image above.

[via] Gmail Tips

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