The "Your Office 365 Account is About to Be Deleted" Phishing Scam
Office 365 users are asked to delete email messages like the one below, which claim that their Office 365 account is about to be deleted. The fake email messages are being sent by cybercriminals to frighten and trick the recipients into clicking on the link within them. The link goes to a phishing website or a fake website looking like Microsoft’s website, created by cybercriminals to trick potential victims into signing in. But, any attempts to sign into the fake website, will result in the victims’ Microsoft account usernames and passwords being sent to cybercriminals.
A "Your Office 365 Account is About to Be Deleted" Phishing Scam
From: - office-365@security.onmicrosoft.com
Date: March 16, 2019 at 4:35:33 PM EDT
Subject: Re: Your Office 365 acount is about to be deleted
Your Office 365 Business Essentials
Invoice is ready
Sign in to the Office 365 Admin center To Pay your Invoice
View this message in the Office 365 message center
To customize what's included in this email, who gets it, or to unsubscribe, set your Message center preferences.
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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.
Office 365 users should never click on a link to sign into their accounts, they should instead, go directly to https://www.office.com/ and sign-in from there. If there is something that needs to be done to their accounts, they will be notified. This is will prevent Office 365 users from visiting phishing websites disguised as legitimate Microsoft website that steals account credentials.
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Note: Some of the information in samples on this website may have been impersonated or spoofed.