Online Threat Alerts (OTA) - Alerting you to scams and frauds.

"Email Address Storage Limit Alert" Phishing Scams
Email Address Storage Limit Alert Phishing Scams

Online users, if you have received the "Email Address Storage Limit Alert" email messages like the one below, which claim that your email accounts, especially Microsoft Hotmail, Outlook, Live accounts, have reached their storage limit, and ask you to click on a link to verify your accounts or correct the problem, please delete the email messages and do not follow the instructions in them. This is because the email messages are phishing scams sent by cybercriminals to steal their potential victims’ email account credentials. And, once cybercriminals have stolen their victims’ email account credentials, they will gain access to their accounts, hijack their accounts and use them fraudulently.

Instead of clicking on a link, it is recommended that online users go directly to their email accounts to determine their email account's storage usage.

A Sample of the "Email Address Storage Limit Alert" Phishing Email

From: hotmail.com account team

Sent: Friday, April 27, 2018 11:38 AM

Subject: Storage limit alert

Hello,

We're writing to let you know that your email address is almost out of storage space. If you exceed your storage space limit, any incoming email is returned to the sender and marked as "undeliverable."

Click here to upgrade your email storage space.

Sincerely,

Support

This is an administrative message from hotmail.com. It is not spam. From time to time, hotmail.com will send you such messages in order to communicate important information about your email account.

Online users who have already been tricked by the phishing emails, are asked to change their passwords immediately before their accounts are hijacked or used fraudulently. For Microsoft users whose email accounts have already been hijacked, may click here for help to recover their accounts.

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