Gmail Users Targeted By Rogue Password Recovery Tool

Consumers trying to recover forgotten Gmail passwords have been reminded not to use the widely-circulating Gmail hacker Pro software, which claims it can recover passwords for a fee.

Webmail password recovery scams are nothing new but this particular one can turn up in several guises, starting with the simple fee scam uncovered by GFI Labs. Gmail Hacker claims it can search the hard drive for the forgotten Gmail password, returning it for a fee of $29.99 (19), in spite of the fact that Google itself offers the same password recovery and reset for nothing using its own service.

The program "processes" the user's Gmail address before demading the payment in return for a generated key. "Clearly, this is designed to extract a tidy sum of money from unwitting users, and we'd like to save you, Dear Reader, the trouble of wanting to try it out. We categorize GMail Hacker Pro as a Trojan under the detection name GmailHackerPro.pj!.1a.," says GFI in a new blog.