A Scamicide reader recently received the phishing email reproduced below which had as the message line “Your F acebook Account is Temporary Blocked (Critical Login Attemp) Please Verification is NEEDED.”  This is typical of phishing emails that they attempt to make it appear that there is an emergency that requires your immediate attention.  Unfortunately, if you click on the links provided in the email one of two things can happen and they both are bad.  Either you will be taken to a legitimate appearing website where you will be lured into providing personal information that can lead to your becoming a victim of identity theft or, even worse, merely by clicking on the link, you will download dangerous malware such as keystroke logging malware or ransomware.

TIPS

There are a number of indications that this is a scam, most notably that the email address of the sender has nothing to do with Facebook.  Also, while Facebook will attempt to notify you if they believe someone has improperly accessed your account, Facebook does not send out messages like this with buttons that say “Report the user” and “Yes, me.” If you get such a message and think that there is the possibility that it might be legitimate, don’t click on any links in the email.  Rather, Go to your Security and login settings on Facebook, click, “Settings & Privacy” then click “Settings” then click “Security and login” and scroll to “See recent emails from Facebook and click “View’ where you will see if a real Facebook email was sent to you.

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