Change facebook password at your own risk

A virus masking itself as the 'Facebook Password Reset Confirmation email' is on the prowl

Facebook can also ruin fun. Saikat Debnath, a resident of Rohini in Delhi, learnt this lesson the hard way. The 23-year-old Engineering student's life turned upside down when he could not access his Facebook and email accounts. This is not all. He also had to spend big bucks to repair his laptop.

One wrong click on an email that appeared to come from the social networking site Facebook landed Debnath into this mess.

According to cyber experts, a new virus is spreading on name of the social networking site. Facebook. The virus Bredolab disguised as a "Password Reset Confirmation Email," appears to come from Facebook, which makes it easy fool netizens.

Delhi-based cyber crime expert Vivek vohra said, "Bredolab attaches a file that purports to contain a new password. That file is a trojan horse that will download a host of nasty files from the Web."

"I got an email with the subject "Facebook Password Reset Confirmation". The email read: to provide safety to our client, passwords have been changed. You can find your new password in the attached document. After opening the file, I realised it was a spoof email," said the disappointed Debnath.

Later, Debnath was taken aback when he couldn't access his email and Facebook accounts.

"My accounts have been disabled. Every time I try to log in it tells me 'wrong password'. Even my operating system collapsed. When I took my laptop to the technician, he told an infected file has corrupted the system," he said.

Talking about the new ways of attacking innocent users, Vohra said, "Cyber crooks are coming up with new viruses to steal email id and all the personal details of netizens. It is always suggested to check every link and attachment before opening them." "Unlike the Facebook phishing attacks last year, when bad links were distributed through hacked user accounts, now the name of social networking sites are being used."

According to the Facebook team, the spoof email containing the virus wasn't coming from the social networking site.

Facebook said that this virus is being distributed through email. We never send users a new password as an attachment.

"We're educating users on how to detect this through the Facebook Security Page," the company blog post added.

"To avoid getting the virus, do not open a "Password Reset Confirmation E-mail" if you didn't request a password from Facebook," the cyber expert said.

IBM Aims To Undercut Gmail

Big Blue's new $3 a month enterprise e-mail service could steal market share from Google.

IBM's brand may not stand up to Google's in terms of inspiring excitement. But when it comes to the reliability and security of a service like e-mail, Big Blue is hoping to sell the good kind of boring.

IBM ( IBM - news - people ) on Monday is expected to release its first Web-based e-mail offering, an enterprise-focused addition to Lotus Notes it calls iNotes. The service will let users pick their domain name and will debut at $3 per month, a price aimed directly at undercutting Google's ( GOOG - news - people ) $50 per year and the $10 to $12 per month that Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ) charges for its Webmail services. Though Microsoft offers one version of Webmail for $2 a month, IBM says it will offer 1 gigabyte of storage, twice the amount of Webmail.
IBM's e-mail gambit stems from its acquisition of the messaging assets of Outblaze; the deal closed in April and IBM will inherit 18 million customers.

But the service's timing may be based on more than the mere integration of IBM's Outblaze buyout: Google has spent the year trying to recoup from repeated outages of Gmail, including its own enterprise email service--the online applications have been unavailable for multi-hour windows three times so far this year.

IBM is hoping to tap into its reputation as a trusted outsourcer to show that it can do better. "We run the world's most mission critical systems for banks, telcos and utilities," says Sean Poulley, IBM's vice president of online collaboration services. "It's fair to say we're pretty trusted."

Dave Girouard, president of Google's enterprise division, defends Gmail, saying that it still offers 99.9% reliability--far greater than the average e-mail service many companies run themselves. As for competition with Google, he points out that IBM's 1 gigabyte of storage space is far inferior to the 25 gigs that Google offers.