Fake Emails Impersonating Microsoft’s Outlook.com Targets Internauts

A fresh phishing email impersonating Microsoft's 'Outlook.com Team' is of late hitting innocent Internauts, reported hoax-slayer.com on April 13, 2015.

The phishing email asserts that Microsoft Outlook will suspend support to the email recipients accounts, which shall make them incapable to send or read emails if they fail to update their account's information before May 11, 2015.

Clicking an 'Update your Account' URL embedded within the phony email can however, help you (recipient) to overcome the said issue.

But, the email has no connection with 'Outlook Team' or Microsoft.

Instead, it's a crude phishing scam masterminded by scammers to dupe you into giving up your account details, without any suspicion.

The update URL if clicked takes you to a phony website that emulates the real login page of Microsoft's Outlook. Once you submit your account credentials on this page, automatically you will be redirected to the official Microsoft website.

In the meantime, scammers can lay their hands on your login details and thus employ it to compromise your Microsoft Account. A single set of login credentials can be employed to access a host of Microsoft services. These credentials are thus, like a gold mine for scammers.

Thus, if you get an email with content similar to the above one in your inbox, avoid clicking on any embedded URLs or from opening any attached files.

However, if you fell for the ruse and then become suspicious immediately modify your Microsoft Hotmail/Live/Outlook email id and password. If you fail to change it, report the unfortunate incident to Microsoft on its official website.

Unfortunately, it is not the first time that Outlook.com users have been exploited by scammers since the on-set of 2015, security experts analyzing the scam email highlight.

In January 2015 too, security experts at security firm Malwarebytes cautioned users of phony emails impersonating Microsoft. Citing temporary block from receiving emails to one's account, the fake notification claimed that Microsoft had intercepted illegal and spamming activities from his account to certain email addresses blacklisted by it, thus, for the his personal safety he was instructed to update account details.

» SPAMfighter News - 4/24/2015