Slack is asking some users to reset their passwords and it’s not a scam

If you are a Slack user and you just received a fishy-looking email asking you to reset your account password, don’t worry, it’s not a scam. Slack is sending a selected bunch of its users an email asking them to reset their passwords.

Folks at Android Police contacted the company, who then confirmed that the email was legit. As it turns out, Slack’s app accidentally logged credentials of some users in plain text. Owing to this, the company is sending notifications to the affected users asking them to reset their passwords.

“We are taking this step as a precaution due to an error that we discovered and there is no evidence of any unauthorized or third-party access to this account...On December 20th, 2020, Slack introduced a bug that caused some versions of our Android app to log clear text user credentials to their device. Slack identified the issue on January 20th, 2021, and fixed it on January 21st, 2021,” Slack wrote in its email to the affected users.

It is worth noting that this bug only affected a selected bunch of the company’s Android app, which means if you are accessing Slack on iOS, you are safe.

Meanwhile, if you did get an email from the company, asking you to reset your password, here’s what you need to do:

Step 1: From your desktop, click your profile picture in the top right.

Step 2: Select View profile from the menu. This will open your profile on the right side of your screen.

Step 3: Click More, then select Account settings.

Step 4: Next to Password, click Expand.

Step 5: Next, reset or change your password. If you've forgotten your current password, click Reset your password by email. If you know your current password, enter your current password, then a new password. Click Save password to finish.

Apart from asking the affected users to change their passwords, Slack is also asking them to wipe their app data. There are multiple ways of doing so on Android. One of the ways you can try is by following these steps: Settings > Apps > Slack > Storage > Clear Data or Storage.