Online Threat Alerts (OTA) - Alerting you to scams and frauds.
Your Account Might be at Risk Email Phishing Scam

The email message below with the subject: "Your account might be at RISK," which claims that recipients' email accounts will be locked due to failure to re-verify and confirm ownership, is a phishing scam created by cybercriminals to steal email account user names and passwords. Once the cyber-criminals have stolen their potential victims' email account username and password, they will hijack the email accounts and use them fraudulently. Therefore, recipients of the same email message are advised to delete it, and not follow the instructions in it.

The Phishing Email Message

Subject: Your account might be at RISK!

On Wednesday, February 1, 2017, 3:21 PM

From: Yahoo!

Avoid [Email address removed] suspension

Hi [Email address removed],

Account will be locked due to failure to re-verify and confirm ownership.

Kindly Click here to verify and get more secured.

Ignorance will lead to temporary suspension of your service provision

NOTE: This is a one time user verification carried out in purpose to provide a more secured platform and shut down robot or malicious users created in purpose of spamming and other fraudulent activities.

Best Regards,

(C) 2017 Mail. All rights reserved. NMLSR ID 399801

The link in the email message goes to a fake Hotmail, Outlook, Yahoo, AOL or other email providers' website, which will steal the visitors' usernames and passwords by asking them to sign-in into their email accounts on the same website. If the visitors attempt to sign-in, their email account usernames and passwords (credentials) will be sent to the cyber-criminals behind the email scam, who will use the information to hijack their accounts and use them fraudulently.

Help protect against phishing scams, online users advised to go directly to their email accounts instead of clicking on a link in an email message. And, if there is something wrong with their accounts, it will be shown to them after signing into. This will prevent online users from visiting phishing websites disguised as legitimate ones.

Online users who were tricked by the phishing email should change their email account password immediately, before their email accounts are hijacked and used fraudulently cybercriminals.

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