Monday, April 13, 2009

Beware of MSN messenger virus - photobukkets

"I am not so alert today"

Received a photobucket link on MSN, 30 minutes after I chat with my friend online using MSN messenger. I though my friend want to share some photo with me. After I click on the link, it ask me to login with my MSN username and password.

I don't really like photobucket (a photo sharing site), I only visit the site once or twice some time ago, but when did photobucket start using MSN username for login? I take a quick glance at the url, it looks normal. I hesitate... for just 2 seconds and continue login...I must be crazy for doing it.

Oh! No. It doesn't look like a photobucket website. I key in the url manually, pretty sure that is not a photobucket website (but I type the wrong address again, photobuckets). I take a close look at url send from my friend's url, is http://xxx. PhotoBukkets .com... and not the popular photobuckets.

The first thing I do is change my MSN password. How? Go to passport member services, sign in and change password.

There are some precautions that you can avoid this type of mistake:

1. Do not click on external url link from suspecious email or IM (instant messenger).
2. Never login from the url you click on any hyperlink document, just in case you miss out the url name like what I experience today.
3. If you really need a login, type in the url address manually and login from its homepage. After you have login, click on the external url link, if the url link is same with your login address, it should automatically login for you, it will not ask for username and password again.

Sometimes we are just lazy and forget about all the rules, but just be alert.

3 comments:

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Yeah... like when it's a hot chick I like... Lucky me I search about this link before! It seemed suspect for me! But as you said... it's almost convincing! :)

Unknown said...

The funny things, is that when you read the terms of agreement, you see that they have everything covered and anything they do is strict legal.