MS threatens to delete old Hotmail account.

[Chris K]

Hi to all,

Did someone else received this message from MS Live? I have an account since 2003 and regularly use it.

Dear Account Owner

This is email from Windows Live Hotmail and we are sending it to you account user for your safety.
Due to the anonymous registration of our account which is causing congestion to our service so we are shutting down some account and your account was among those to be deleted,so the purpose of this email is for you to verify that you are the owner of this account and you are still using it by filling the information below after clicking on the reply button:

* Username:...........................
* Password:............................
* Date of Birth: .....................
* Country Or Territory: ......

Warning!!! Account owner that fails to verify his/her account after two weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.

You received this email because you subscribed to Windows Live Alerts.This is a non monitored email account. This email was sent by Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052.
©2011 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved

Is there a way to check if it really comes from MS Live?

Chris

[jagabo]

Smells like Phish.

[jman98]

I work in IT. Let's look at this logically. They asked you for your:
Username
Password
Date of Birth
Country or Territory

First of all, Hotmail already knows your username. They hopefully do NOT know your password and have no way to get it because that would mean that they are doing what they are supposed to do with passwords (it's a long story, but the short version is that the password should be undecryptable - if Hotmail has followed industry security practices). Why on earth would you need to give them your date of birth, which I'm sure they didn't ask for 8 years ago. However, date of birth and country could enable them to do some identity theft on you. Hotmail has no need to ask for your password because their admins can access your account without it and reset it if necessary.

This is totally a scam. You don't need to check. If you doubt me then truly there is no hope for you. I'm quite serious. If you don't already understand that this is a scam WITHOUT having to check it - THERE IS NO HOPE FOR YOU. You HAVE to get smart enough to recognize that this is a scam on your own or the only safe thing for you to do is to NEVER go online again. I'm being insulting but too bad. This is serious stuff here. We need smarter users out there who don't fall for this. Either get smarter for the next time or get the heck off the internet because you can't be trusted on it.

[Chris K]

@jman98

Of course I didn't reply on it!

I wouldn't have asked if I trusted it! I have always had a very clean account and this is the very first time I get this kind of thing.

BTW; I see also spelling mistakes in it "you" where it should be "your". "account" where it should be "accounts". I expect MS to be more accurate!?

[budz]

I've had my hotmail acct. since the '98....never had a email like that...just delete it and btw change your password as well.....

[Chris K]

...just delete it and btw change your password as well.....

Thanks! I both did.

[victoriabears]

Any emails I have doubts about, most are obviously fraudulent, look at who it is TO, is it addressed to you , most are not, if it has a link, hover over it with your cursor, it is usually nothing to do with the purported recipient.

Call the purported sender to check.

[Chris K]

I cannot check it out anymore because I deleted it, but I'll keep your advice in mind.

I only copied the text but it was a full html mail with buttons and pics that made it look quite official.

Another thing I should have realized is that this mail was in english (not my native language), while Window Live Mail always does its announcements in my native language. As I remember well, in the early hotmail days there were no local services and all communication with hotmail was done in english.