Online Threat Alerts (OTA)
An anti-cybercrime community alerting the public.

"Mailbox Info - You are Running at 99.8 Gigabytes" Phishing Scam

Recipients of the email message below, which claims that the recipients' mailboxes are running at 99.8 gigabytes and they will not be able to send or receive new messages until they have revalidated their mailboxes, is a phishing scam. Recipients of the same email message are asked not to follow the instructions in it, because it was NOT sent by their system administrators. The email message is actually a phishing scam sent by cyber-criminals to steal their recipients' email account usernames and passwords, by frightening them in clicking on the link in the same email message, by claiming that their mailboxes are almost full. The link goes to a phishing website where visitors will be asked to sign into their email accounts. But, any attempt to sign-in by visitors, will result in their email account username and passwords being sent to the cybercriminals responsible for the scam.

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The Phishing Email Message

From: ® Version Stefanie.decker@gmx.de
Sent: Thu, Sep 22, 2016 12:14 pm

Subject: Mailbox Info

You are running at 99.8 gigabytes, you can not send or receive new messages until you re-validate your mailbox.

click link below: Re-Validate

Thank you!

Web mail system administrator!

Recipients who have already followed the instructions in the message should change their their email account password immediately, before they are hijacked and used fraudulently by cyber criminals.

Receipients of email messages which claim that they should click on a link in order to fix or correct a problem with their accounts, should always contact their system administrator directly to verify the authenticity of the email messages. They should never click on a link to sign into their email accounts. For online users who do not have system administrators, like Hotmail or Gmail users, should sign directly into their accounts, and if there is something wrong with their accounts, they will be notifiied after signing in. If there is no notifications, they should just continue to use their email accounts.

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Note: Some of the information in samples on this website may have been impersonated or spoofed.

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