My Clever AssistantMy Opinion of Hackers and Phishers…
…they are pond scum. People who use their skills and knowledge to rip you off and screw up your life must be psychopathic thieves.
This started as a Facebook post but quickly grew to more text than usual for a social media update. My intent is to inform and hopefully educate so my community will not fail prey to this type of phishing attempt.
I recently received a “notification email” with a sender address of Dropbox <no-reply@dropboxmail.com>. The message is as follows:
| Hi (one of my email addresses)We have a warning in our system that you recently tried to login in to Dropbox with a password already expired that you haven’t changed long time already. Your old password is expired for security reasons and you’ll need to create a new one to log in.Please visit the link to update your password
Request Password Thanks! |
There was a link embedded in the “Request Password” text which I’ve removed.
Four things in this email made me suspicious – the 4 tip offs are:
- The email address this message was sent to is not on record with Dropbox
- I had made no attempts to login around this time of this email.
- The syntax of the messsage – “…with a password already expired that you haven’t changed long time already.” Hmmm?
- I use two step verification with Dropbox. This is something I wholeheartedly recommend to ALL Dropbox users.
Some of you may be thinking that this was simply to report an unauthorized attempt to log into and access the account. Sure, that’s seems logical. And that’s what many of these phishers are counting on; a knee-jerk reaction to make you want to click that “Request Password” link.
I logged into my account as I normally would and everything worked as it should, including the 2-step verification process. This email message was an obvious phishing attempt email.
Dropbox Phishing Attempt – Here’s the takeaway…
- Do Not Click Links in Emails unless you REALLY know who the email is from. It’s just not a good practice to do so.
- If you are a Dropbox user and you don’t have 2 step verification on your account, sign up for it TODAY – you can thank me later.
- Consider using a GOOD password Manager; one that you can use to quickly check the email address of your accounts. If you keep a manual list of passwords, don’t save the file to your hard drive. Hackers can easily crack password protected files. Try a USB flash drive for this kind of data.
Finally, when I checked the header of this email, I found that the IP address where it originated is located in Tunisia. Now a quick Google check will show you that Dropbox’s locations are California, Texas and Dublin, Ireland. I didn’t find a listing for Dropbox – Tunisia (North Africa) and I don’t believe they have a satellite office there either.
Be Cautious and Stay Safe while online.
To the Phishers and hackers – You may get me tomorrow but I won this day. I’m blowing raspberries at you – you soulless devils!
