The email message below with the subject: "Your E-mail Upgrade Notice," which claims that the recipients' Hotmail, Outlook or Live email accounts should be something or else their accounts will be deactivated, is a phishing scam sent by cybercriminals to frighten the recipients into clicking on a link within the same email message. The in the fake email message goes to a phishing website that will ask the recipients who have clicked on it to sign-in with their user names and passwords to update their Hotmail, Outlook or Live accounts. But, once the requested information is submitted, it will be sent to the cybercriminals behind the phishing scam.to protect against phishing scams, online users are asked to never click on a link to sign into their online accounts. They should instead, go directly to their online account provider's website by typing the website's address in their web browsers, or use a popular search engine to find their online provider's website. Also, Microsoft will never threaten Hotmail, Outlook or Live users to upgrade their accounts, and threaten deactivation if their users do not comply.
The "Your E-mail Upgrade Notice" Phishing Email
From: fwfujw@ hotmail.com
Subject: Your E-mail Upgrade Notice
Date: Wed, 18 May 2016 03:09:32 -0700
Microsoft Account
Dear Hotmail Customer,
It has come to our notice that your e-mail account is not yet upgraded after several notice of verification you are yet to upgrade your account.
Kindly be informed that we'll not be held responsible for your account deactivation once you fail to upgrade your account after this Final Warning.to remove your account from our deactivation list kindly click Upgrade now below
To upgrade click:Upgrade Now
Click Here To Unblock Or Move This Message Inbox And Click Here
WARNING:ACCOUNT OWNER THAT REFUSES TO UPDATE HIS/HER ACCOUNT AFTER 5 DAYS OF RECEIVING THIS WARNING WILL LOSE HIS OR HER ACCOUNT PERMANENTLY.DO NOT IGNORE THIS NOTICE.YOU MUST FIRSY MOVE THIS MESSAGE TO YOUR INBOX,SECONDLY, CLICK AT SHOW CONTENT ABOVE TO ENABLE YOU CLICK AT Outlook Windows Connector ADDRESS.
Regards,
Thanks for using Outlook!
The Microsoft account team
Copyright © 2016 Microsoft.
Once cybercriminals have gotten their potential victims’ account credentials (usernames and passwords), they will use it to hijack their Microsoft accounts and use them fraudulently. Therefore, recipients of the phishing email message (see below) who were tricked into clicking on the link within it and have attempted to sign into the phishing or fake website that they were taken, are asked to change their Microsoft account passwords immediately, before they are hijacked and used fraudulently by cybercriminals.
Hotmail or Microsoft email account users who have received suspicious email messages, can verify the authenticity of email messages, but going directly to www.hotmail.com, www.live.com or www.outlook.com and sign into their accounts from there. If there is some thing wrong with their accounts, they will be notified once they have signed in.