14 DAY TRIAL // Email messages claiming to be from Microsoft and informing about account termination have been spreading lately in an attempt to dupe unsuspecting users into providing credentials for the email service.
Plenty of users still fall for this type of tricks, where a situation requiring urgent action is presented in order to lower the chances of signs of deceit to be spotted.
In this campaign, the potential victim receives the message as a result of an alleged submitted request to close the Microsoft account. A period of three days is given to cancel the procedure, which is designed to prompt an urgent action from the victim.
As is usually the case, a link for stopping the account termination process is offered, which points to a fraudulent page that requires logging in. All the information submitted via the fields available is sent straight to the crooks.
A Microsoft account is used for multiple services from the company, including access to the OneDrive cloud storage, where multimedia files and documents can be saved, as well as to the web-based email service. Moreover, these credentials can be synonymous with the username and password used for logging into the latest versions of Windows.
As such, guarding this information should be paramount for users and a moment should be taken to think whether the message is genuine or not. In any case, it is advisable not to use the URL provided in a suspicious message to log in, but type the address manually in the web browser in order to access the service.