The email messages below with the subject: "Account Suspension: violation notice," which claim that the recipients' Hotmail, Outlook or Live email accounts will be suspended because they violated Microsoft's terms and service, are phishing scams sent by cybercriminals to frighten the recipients into clicking on a link within the same email message. The link in the fake email messages goes to a phishing website that will ask the recipients who have clicked on it to sign-in with their usernames and passwords to resolve the issue. 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.
The "Microsoft Account Violation" Phishing Email
From: Microsoft.com Team <kenan_polutan@live.com>
Date: 16 July 2018 at 11:18:09 pm AEST
Subject: Account Suspension: violation notice
VIOLATION OF TERMS OF SERVICE
Your account will be suspended from sending maiIs due to violation of terms of service.
All saved maiIs will be lost if this is not resolved.
Activate And Resolve Issue Now Urgently!
Sincerely,
Customer Care Team ©2018
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 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 something wrong with their accounts, they will be notified once they have signed in.