Cyber-Bob’s Daily Cyber Safety Tip — #112

Beware the “Reset Your Password” Scam That Starts After You Log In

Here’s a sneaky one crooks are pulling lately:

You log into a website — perfectly legit, no issues — and right after logging in, a pop-up appears saying something like:

“Suspicious activity detected on your account. You must reset your password immediately.”

Looks official. Looks urgent. Looks like it came from the site you just signed into.

But it’s a planted overlay, often triggered by a malicious browser extension, an injected script from an ad network, or a compromised page element. And if you fall for it, you end up typing your new password directly into the attacker’s trap.

How to protect yourself:

• If the pop-up appears immediately after login, stop right there.
  Real sites don’t ambush you the moment you sign in.

• Close the pop-up, then go directly to your account settings manually.
  If the site really needs a password reset, you’ll see an alert there.

• If in doubt, log out and log back in from a clean browser tab.

• Check your browser extensions. Anything unfamiliar? Remove it.
  Extensions can pretend to be part of the website, even though they’re not.

• Never trust urgent warnings triggered by overlays.
  Real security alerts come from the site itself — not floating windows that look like cheap knockoffs of the real thing.

Cyber-Bob says:
 This little trick is catching even seasoned users off guard, so staying alert keeps you one step ahead of the bad guys.

(I created the prompt, ChatGPT created the information.)