knobee

Facebook, what’s the deal?  You sent me an email yesterday saying:

Hey Vince,

We have reset your Facebook account password for security reasons. You will need to use the link provided in this email to create a new, secure password for your account. Do not use your old password. In the future, please make sure that when you log in to Facebook, you always log in from a legitimate Facebook page with the facebook.com domain. To reset your password, follow the link below:
https://login.facebook.com/reset.php?email=vince.degeorge@gmail.com

(If clicking on the link doesn’t work, try copying and pasting it into your browser.)

Please contact info@facebook.com with any questions.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

Right off the bat I think “phishing.”  It sure looks like phishing.  So I examine the email header careful, the link carefully and do some research and it turns out to be a legit email - just a dumb format to do such a thing.

My next thought is: “Why?”  Why did you reset my password?  Oh, “security reasons.”  I’m sorry, but that could mean many things.  Was it your security or my security?  Did someone track to repeatedly hack my account?  Did you have a security breach and someone may have access to my account information?  This is a pretty big deal to me.

So then I see this:

So apparently others have had the same thing happen, which makes me think this wasn’t someone trying to directly hack my account. There was either a breach in their data, or someone was trying some mass hacking with a script.

I am also curious if anyone else that may have had this issue also tried out http://pageonce.com. I did access my Facebook account with this yesterday and wonder if that has anything to do with it?  It had a lot of Internet coverage over the past day, and I would imagine many have tried it out - possibly with their access to Facebook being viewed as an attack?

Obviously this would not be an issue if Facebook was a little more clear of the situation in their email. I appreciate that they were doing this to protect my account, but a little more explanation would have made me feel better.

I’d like to get feedback from anyone else this may have happened to and any commonalities.  I emailed the contact given for questions, but I have yet to hear anything.

Update:

Hi Vince,

Facebook discovered a scheme that affected some users of the site. The users impacted by the scheme had entered their login information on a fake page that looked like our standard login page. The situation has been controlled, and we have reset the passwords of affected accounts so they are now secure. Rest assured that the email you received did come from Facebook, and that the link it provides is legitimate.

In the future, please make sure that you only log in to the site from pages that include the facebook.com domain (either http://www.facebook.com or http://www.facebook.com/login.php). You should also be careful not to click on any strange or untrustworthy links, even if they’ve been sent by your friends. If you see a page that looks suspicious, be sure to report it to us at privacy@facebook.com immediately.

Once logged in, you will need to update your password from the “Settings” tab on the Account page. To ensure the security of your account, please change your password to something new and unique. Make sure that your new password is at least six characters long and that it contains numbers as well as a variety of characters and capitalization. Please also create a new password that is different than other passwords that you use on the internet. Finally, you should make sure that any email addresses associated with your account are secure.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Audrina
User Operations

So, there ya go. I’m positive I didn’t go to a phishing page previously, but it looks like they did a mandatory change for some - possibly one of my contacts had gone to the page?
Facebook