Is this for real or do they just want to steal my password?

[Vikuna2009+]

Hi Warriors,

after becoming a member here, I tend to question EVERYTHING . Reading everyone's opinion on so many various subjects have made me realize that I am to trusty and need to be a little bit more on the look-out. Now I received the following email yesterday and don't know WHAT to think.

Is this for real or is somone actually trying to steal my password (Maybe I am getting paranoid...).




Dear Account User

This Email is from Hotmail Customer Care and we are sending it to every Hotmail Email User Accounts Owner for safety. we are having congestion due to the anonymous registration of Hotmail accounts so we are shutting down some Hotmail accounts and your account was among those to be deleted. We are sending this email to you so that you can verify and let us know if you still want to use this account. If you are still interested please confirm your account by filling the space below.Your User name, password, date of birth and your country information would be needed to verify your account.

Due to the congestion in all Hotmail users and removal of all unused Hotmail Accounts, Hotmail would be shutting down all unused Accounts, You will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.


I know, I should not even have a hotmail account but this is one I've had for many, many years. And, I use it on a daily basis besides my other accounts.

What's your take, am I just being overly paranoid or is this actually some kind of scam? Thanks for your input .

[Robyn8243]

You are not being paranoid....they are out to get you.

Delete it, or find out if Hotmail has a fraud or phishing department,
and forward it to them.

Robyn

[Dan Riffle]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and call this a phishing attack. First of all, Hotmail simply cancels old accounts for non-use. Additionally, they would have addressed you personally rather than as "Account User" and the letter itself doesn't read right -- notice the lower case "we" to start the second sentence (unless that was your typo).

[Vikuna2009+]

Originally Posted by riff

I'm going to go out on a limb here and call this a phishing attack. First of all, Hotmail simply cancels old accounts for non-use. Additionally, they would have addressed you personally rather than as "Account User" and the letter itself doesn't read right -- notice the lower case "we" to start the second sentence (unless that was your typo).

Thank you guys, I guess my "radar" is more up to par these days . Got to go to w.o.r.k., will check back tonite for other replies, and/or advice and see if I can report it. Have a great day .

[Joshua.E1]

There will always be hackers or scammers out there, wanting to get quick money from everyone.

What you need to be is to be vigilant against all these, and check with the authorities first before doing anything.

[johnjimat]

well that was totally scam. dont trust any email like that. why is so much people doing this scam everday especially email that told us to help him transfer their money

[Steve Diamond]

This has all the earmarks of a phishing attack. I'm surprised that your email program even allowed you to open it. What program are you using?

Since phishing became common a few years ago, nearly every legitimate online institution has stopped doing anything like this in their outgoing messages. They won't ask you to reply and include sensitive information, and they won't ask you to click a link in the email to log in. They will say explicitly that you should always navigate to their site by typing the right URL into your browser before you log in.

That's great advice. You should also double-check the URL in your browser's address bar to make sure you're on the right domain.

If you want to dig a little deeper, you can tell a phishing email by doing 'view source'. Look at any links and/or form actions in the source code. You'll often see something like this:

Click here to log in:
<a href="http://192.168.0.1" title="http://www.firstunitedbank.com/login">http://www.firstunitedbank.com/login</a>

The point there is that they've tried to fool you into believing that when you click on the link it will take you to the firstunitedbank.com website, but it's actually going to take you to the (made-up in this case) IP address 192.168.0.1, which could be anywhere at all and is in fact a phishing machine that will steal your information.

In the case of your email, rather than clicking a link they're asking you to reply and include your information. If you look at the full headers, I'll bet you find something like this. The From address is a Hotmail email (someone@hotmail.com) but the Reply-To is totally different. When you hit Reply they're counting on your not noticing that the message isn't going back to the From address.

It's worthwhile to know these little tricks so you can see for yourself what's going on.

Steve

[Bill_Z]

yes never respond to an email and include any sensitive info...anytime an email asks you to do that, it's a scam

[greenovni]

Def a scam

[articlemaddness]

Personal information via email is no longer personal.

Like everyone here agrees that email is garbage - Scam

[Yogini]

It is a scam. I get these often from people that claim to be various banks, ebay , paypal and other major companies. They also use scare tactics such as your account has been compromised (yet they are the ones trying to compromise your account).

Debbie

[JMB Marketing Group]

It's a scam BIG TIME!

Hotmail used to automatically delete your account if you didn't sign into it once every 30 days. Meaning, you could log into all or one of your particular accounts EVERYDAY, but if for some reason you didn't log into one of your accounts, it would get deleted. No warning, No nothing. How do I know??? It has happened to me more than once .... and more than once for that same account to boot!

In addition, a few months ago I was sent an e-mail from "them" but I found it in the Junk folder. When I looked at the e-mail address it looked awfully similar to the their real e-mail address but it wasn't. The big clue I had was that it was in the Junk folder. So if it was actually from them it would have ended in my incoming box.

Anyway, the heading (can't remember what it said) freaked me out that I actually called Microsoft.

They told me to forward the e-mail to:

abuse@microsoft.com

Do that and that should take of those bastards.

Cheerio,

JMB

[greff]

Yes, a scam.

What does the link look like?

[mentorondemand]

You should report this to Hotmail

[MR. Bliss]

You might want to change to a Gmail account.

[JMB Marketing Group]

Originally Posted by MR. Bliss

You might want to change to a Gmail account.

HUH?? I've actually heard of HORROR stories, here on the Warrior Forum, about Gmail accounts being hacked! At least I wasn't hacked! It was a "phishing" e-mail that TRIED to hack my account! But, I was too smart for them to do that to me!

[Vikuna2009+]

Hi guys,

thought everyone had moved on to newer threads so I did not keep tab of this one, my apologies, lol. Anyway, the email came to my very old hotmail account. Yes, I know, I should get rid of it but it is such a pain.

My other 3 accounts are all gmail and now you are mentioning gmail HORROR stories !!! So, what's a girl to do? What kind of SAFE and NO SPAM email accounts do you use? Are they paid or FREE versions (prefer free, lol).

As far as my gmail accounts, never had any problems. Have a great day !

Thank you, Eva

[Mukul Verma]

SCAM!!!!!!!

When I am not sure if something is a scam, I go to Google and copy and paste a line in quotes and you will be amazed what you can learn in like 2 seconds. This works for anything

[TPFLegionaire]

Originally Posted by Mukul Verma

SCAM!!!!!!!

When I am not sure if something is a scam, I go to Google and copy and paste a line in quotes and you will be amazed what you can learn in like 2 seconds. This works for anything

This is my strategy as well, has never let me down, Google the scamers into oblivion !

[Karen Connell]

I regularly get such emails telling me that my account at blahblah bank (always well-known Irish or English bank names) needs to be verified and would I please fill in my account details!

It's amazing to me that the only bank(?) not to send me this type of email is the one I actually use!

Needless to say, I just bin them.

Never give account details to anyone.

Karen

[silotiko]

Originally Posted by Vikuna2009+

Hi Warriors,

after becoming a member here, I tend to question EVERYTHING . Reading everyone's opinion on so many various subjects have made me realize that I am to trusty and need to be a little bit more on the look-out. Now I received the following email yesterday and don't know WHAT to think.

Is this for real or is somone actually trying to steal my password (Maybe I am getting paranoid...).




Dear Account User

This Email is from Hotmail Customer Care and we are sending it to every Hotmail Email User Accounts Owner for safety. we are having congestion due to the anonymous registration of Hotmail accounts so we are shutting down some Hotmail accounts and your account was among those to be deleted. We are sending this email to you so that you can verify and let us know if you still want to use this account. If you are still interested please confirm your account by filling the space below.Your User name, password, date of birth and your country information would be needed to verify your account.

Due to the congestion in all Hotmail users and removal of all unused Hotmail Accounts, Hotmail would be shutting down all unused Accounts, You will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.


I know, I should not even have a hotmail account but this is one I've had for many, many years. And, I use it on a daily basis besides my other accounts.

What's your take, am I just being overly paranoid or is this actually some kind of scam? Thanks for your input .

Vikuna2009+, way to be heads up. Notice that it didn't sit right with you, it was that gut feeling that triggered you to make a thread here at the forum and question your uneasiness. Good job-