Why am I getting? We received a request to reset your Facebook password.
Hi, everyone.
Leo Notenboom here for askleo.com.
Let's dive right into the question.
"I received this message.
We received a request us to reset your
Facebook password, two different email addresses at 2:30 something AM.
I was not up at that hour.
The links in the email, I believe,
lead to an actual Facebook page to reset my password.
Does this mean that someone is trying to hack me?"
All I can really say is maybe. There are scenarios that are, in fact,
hacking based, and there are some that are fairly benign.
So I'm going to say probably,
but I can't say yes, since there are several other possibilities.
Let's have a quick look at Facebook password recovery.
If you forget your Facebook password or
you can't log in for some reason, the place to start, of course,
is with the Facebook login screen. The forgot password link.
This walks you through the process of resetting your Facebook password.
One of the things that it does.
One of the pieces of information that it
uses is the email address you have associated with your Facebook account.
It will send a request to that email address with a code that is asking you
to verify that you, in fact, want to change your password.
It's the message that you're seeing right now.
The issue, of course,
is that if you didn't request it, then you don't want to enter that number, right?
Somebody else is probably trying to change your password.
That's the reason this message exists,
and of course, they send it to all of the emails associated with your account.
If you don't already, I do strongly suggest you have multiple
email addresses associated with your account for a couple of reasons.
One is the scenario we're seeing here.
Both email addresses or all email
addresses will get notified that somebody is trying to change the account password.
It also means that if you lose access
to one of those email accounts, you can still recover your Facebook
account because you have these other email addresses you can use instead.
So definitely make sure that your email
addresses are up to date, that you have access to those email accounts.
Now, why are you getting this request?
Well, there are two scenarios.
One is the intentional one,
somebody has your email address, they know how to log into Facebook,
what ID you use, but they don't know your password.
So they try in a fairly misguided attempt to reset the password for the account.
And of course, you get this email.
They're hoping that you will
enter the code, I guess, or change your password or do something.
What they're really hoping, of course,
is that Facebook security isn't as strong as it is.
What they're hoping is that there will be
some way for them to reset the password and hack your account.
But as we've seen, they can't because you're involved, you have to prove it.
You have to enter the code or you have
to provide the code. Without the code, they can't change your password.
So it's a pretty quick nonstarter. Right.
They're not going to hack your account.
The second one is actually completely benign and surprisingly common.
And that is simply this.
They've mistyped an email address.
They are trying to sign in to Facebook.
They can't and the email address
that they're typing in, they think is one thing, but is in fact another.
I get this all the time with Ask Leo as my email address, right?
Askleo@askleo.com
Or Leo@askleo.com
What happens is people will use an email address that's similar.
Maybe their real email address is something very similar to that.
But instead of actually typing in their correct email address, they typo it.
They get it wrong and they enter mine instead.
Totally benign, a complete error on their part, but it does boil down to a mistake.
So when they try and change the password
because they can't log in with this email address that they're getting wrong.
You get the message. Again, the scenario is very simple.
It's benign. Ignore it.
There actually is a third scenario that's also, I'll say at least benign from our
perspective, and that is sometimes these are spam.
Sometimes the link to reset your password
or to enter that code turns out to be to a phishing site.
So the bottom line there, of course.
In fact, the bottom line for all three
of these scenarios is unless you're changing your password,
don't enter the code, ignore these messages and get on with your life.
If you feel like you want to change your password, that's fine.
There's nothing wrong with changing your password if it makes you feel better,
but there's actually no crying need to do that.
If you start getting these. You'll probably continue to get them.
But like I said, changing your password is fine.
There's nothing wrong with that.
If I were to add one more thing to help you feel more secure,
I would turn on two factor security or two factor authentication in Facebook.
That's another level that will increase
the chances of you being able to maintain the account or maintain the security
of your account against anybody who's trying to get in.
Even if they have your password with twofactor authentication turned on,
they still can't get in because they won't have the second factor.
So ultimately, is it a hack attempt?
We just don't know.
But the bottom line is regardless of what it is or what it isn't,
ignore these requests and get on with your life for updates.
For related links for comments and more, visit
askleo.com/35868
I'm Leo Notenboom.
And this is askleo.com