Facebook scares users with account protection status warning

Over the last few weeks we have been contacted by a number of members of the Sophos Facebook page, concerned by a message they saw on Facebook, warning them that their account protection was “very low”.

Your account protection status: Very low
Increase protection

With fake anti-virus (also known as scareware) attacks becoming an ever-growing problem (they attempt to trick you into believing your computer has a security problem when it doesn’t), some security-conscious Facebook users might worry that this is a similarly-styled assault, designed to scare you into taking perhaps unwise actions.

Certainly the warning message gives you the impression that there’s something seriously wrong with how you have defended your Facebook account. I must admit I was surprised to see the message appear…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.