This week I wasn’t planning on writing about Facebook; nevertheless, a new and devious problem has popped up.

I, apparently along with millions of others, have been getting emails that appear to be from Facebook.  These emails have a subject line of, “updated account agreement” with an authentic looking verification number.   It has an attachment and basically states, “Due to Facebook policy changes, all Facebook users must submit a new, updated account agreement, regardless of their original account start date.”  It goes on to say, “Accounts that do not submit the updated account agreement by the deadline will be restricted.”

For me the offending email went to a non-Facebook email account I have.  This was my first warning to ignore the email.  Next, which I have warned you about before, you should never open attached files that you are not expecting, so don’t unzip it.  Lastly, and the most obvious warning is that the unzipped file is an executable file (marked with the .exe extension).  NEVER EVER run an exe file on your computer if you don’t know exactly what it is…NEVER.

So basically, DO NOT follow the directions to unzip and run the agreement.exe file.  I have read several different descriptions on this agreement.  The scariest one states that the executable file is a variant of the “ZeuS banking Trojan“, a very nasty program.  Once run the program installs silently in the background of your system and waits for you to type in your banking logon information.  What happens when you do logon to your bank’s site?  It steals your information and sends the login info back to the bad guys.  Then they take your money…simply and quickly.  They now have full access to your bank accounts just as if they were you.

One day last week several Tech-news sites reported that over 6 million emails like this went out before lunch.

Along with this one, another Facebook phishing scam hit that asked you to logon to your Facebook account and change your password.  When you went to the linked site from within this email you would be taken to a very realistic Facebook login page.  If you entered your current username and password it would then take over your Facebook account.  This isn’t nearly as bad as the first one I mentioned but it may still cause you a lot of problems.  In this case you would most likely never be able to regain control your FB site.  They will have changed the password and your email account that was attached to FB and you are out of the picture.

Please folks I am tired of these attacks and tired of writing about them so let’s all listen up now.

Never open an attached file in your email unless you are waiting to get something from a known person/place.  Even if from a close friend!  Email accounts can be imitated just as if your friend sent something to you.  Next, no trustworthy company will ever ask you for your login information; whether it is a bank or online social network.

PLEASE be careful!  Once a mistake like this is made it may never be properly corrected.

Tags: bad guys, botnet, doyle, evil, facebook, newspaper column, phishing, Ron Doyle, sneaky, twitter, Zeus

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 5:56 am and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.