how can I verify the source of an email

Westindieman

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Received an email yesterday on my hotmail account -

''Dear Account Owner

This Email is from Hotmail Customer Care and we are sending it to every Hotmail Email User Accounts Owner for safety. we are having congestions due to the anonymous registration of Hotmail accounts so we are shutting down some Hotmail accounts and your account was among those to be deleted. We send this email to you so that you can verify and let us know if you still want to use this account. If you are still interested please confirm your account by filling the space below.Your User name, password, date of birth and your country information would be needed to verify your account.

* Username: ...............................
* Password: ................................
* Date of Birth: ............................
* Country Or Territory: ................

Account owner that refuses to update his/her account after receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.

Sincerely,
The Windows Live Hotmail Team''


The information requested is sensitive and I am surprised to get this email. I responded yesterday asking for information on how I can verify the source of this email, I received another email today 'Final Warning!!' and repeating the request.
Has anyone else seen this and can I be sure it is valid?
I have 2 hotmail accounts actually and havent received this on the other one.
 
erm.....that is a fake email, totally obvious. Ignore and delete, or report to hotmail.
 
Mark as Junk & Report. DO NOT REPLY TO THE EMAIL!
 
Thanks guys.
 
View the headers, not sure if you can on Hotmail though. Clearly a scam nevertheless
 
Nowadays no online server anywhere of any note would ever ever ask you to email them your password.

If you ever get anyone anything asking for your password just assume it's spam and delete.
 
Hi, my name is George, I work for hotmail, if you send me those details requested, I can confirm them and get you removed from the list. I can also check your bank account for signs of birdflu on your monies.
Lovingly George

MOD COMMENT...please READ the forum rules and don't post links that contain swearing etc.
 
Hi, my name is George, I work for hotmail, if you send me those details requested, I can confirm them and get you removed from the list. I can also check your bank account for signs of birdflu on your monies.
Lovingly George

got a bit of swearing mate...prepare to have it removed...
 
If you get an email in the future of any similar kind (hotmail, paypal, ebay, bank etc) that uses "Dear Customer/User/Member" instead of your name, ignore it. That's not to say that all emails addressing you by your name are legit, just something to look out for and help identify phising emails.
 
e-mails like this will usually use your name as it is on the e-mail account, so if your sent name on there is different to yours slightly you can tell easily.

My bank wouldn't dare send an e-mail to Dave but that's what the account is set to so that's what the spam says. It's great that RBS and lloyds want to know my login details...i'm not even with them :rolleyes:
 
If you pm me with your pw I can give it a security rating of 1 - 10 *

* security rating varies depending how hungry I am.
 
I've had at least 6 emails 'apparently' from Dixons online this week.
All stating;

"you have made a request to change your password"

Then giving me a link to click,

Then another statement saying;

"For security reasons, any card details we have will be deleted"

I haven't requested to change my password on any of the occasions.
I have avoided clicking the link.
What's this all about?:confused:

FYI, I have gone into the Dixons website via normal methods, not using the link provided, and reset my password since receiving these messages.
 
I stopped playing Warcraft (for my sins!) over 2 years ago so was immediately suspicious on receving the attached email recently. I imagine your average user will click the link, enter their details and the rest will end in tears.

The headers showed it came from a Hotmail account :facepalm:
 

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Simple rule, unless you request a password change yourself, no company will ever ask you to change your password via email request and or ask you to confirm your password.

They just don't do it. it's to prone to fraud.

Most e-mail clients allow you to look at the headers of an email. The headers give a relatively true account of who the e-mail came from, often spammers will use a fake header in the from field that bares no relationship to it's actual sender, it'#s best to cross reference them if you're not sure. If you don't know how to view a header, then just google a term like "view headers in (insert email client here)...

Don't ever click on links to "reset your password " etc unless you specifically requested a password reset yourself.

Always check the spelling of a link in an email, often they purchase domains with similar spellings , as people often scan e-mails this catches people out a lot.

Don't ever trust what you see as the link IN the e-mail body, hover over the link and look to the bottom of the email client to see where it's actually going.

If the sender has blocked this out with JScript, then never ever click on the link,, they are trying to hide something from within a html email.

Banks, reputable e-commerce solutions and so forth will simply never request you send passwords or any kind of details to them via email - Ever.
 

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