I suspected it was a scam mail
By kingparker
@kingparker (9673)
United States
July 24, 2011 12:05pm CST
Yesterday, I received an email from hotmail administrator, to notify me that they have to confirm the legitimacy of my email account with hotmail. Because recently they found several suspicious accounts that congest the live mail server, and they have this form on the text body and want me to fill out all the required information, such my full name, and account id, along with password too. I deeply think it twice, would it be legit, because that involve a lot of my private information and submit to someone I barely knew though. Does anyone receive such account notification alert? I want to contact hotmail administrator for the sake of this suspicious mail, how can I make a contact with hotmail admin? It seems difficult to make a connection with them too.
7 responses
@pvuppal (137)
• United States
1 Sep 11
Yes, I get these emails a lot too and I have learned that you should never trust them and to just go to the official site where you will have notifications about whether if you do need to update anything. Also, I get a lot of thse scams with my bank too saying that there is someone who hacked into the account. I fell for this with my paypal and it was a headache getting all of my money back, so just be careful. I don't know how you can contact hotmail admin though. Maybe call them or something.
@ShawnBoB (215)
• United States
25 Jul 11
Yes your correct, this would be quickly marked as a scam by me and forwarded to MSN support address as a way to report the matter.
Sad, how many people actually fall for this basic trick and respond with this information the person is requesting. Plus don't forget how so many users use the same, or similar password across multiple sites. Once you give up one you have a high chance of other accounts being broken into.
Plus others are correct. Admins & Site operators have access to this information. They setup the databases, scripts and all that. They know how to see your password if needed I am sure.
A old trick I haven't seen for a long time, I use to do as a trick to my friends. Using a free webspace I basically downloaded the login page to hotmail account, re-pasted in little website, changed the form to a mail type form, and after they 'entered there info on this login page', they were re-directed to some image, and their username and password was sitting in my e-mail waiting to be read.
@ebuscat (5935)
• Philippines
25 Jul 11
For me yes it is the way they did and if you open to it you have a virus in your computer be watchful in that case.
@changjiangzhibin89 (16789)
• China
25 Jul 11
I did received a lot of email from all kinds of sites,in which some said what you have said ; others said that let me join in work part time.I was all at sea and couldn't tell the true from the false.I had no choice but to delete them as spams.
@yspmyl (3435)
• Malaysia
25 Jul 11
When the e-mail provider ask you to give them your account information such a your full name, account id and password, that shows that it is totally a scam mail. Know why? It is because the e-mail provider itself can actually can look for such information in their own database but why they need to ask such a information from you? If I am you, I will just ignore the e-mail. Or you can send an e-mail to contact the hotmail admin to see if the the mail is legit.