Fake email overlimit messages in Outlook

A new email trick to fool people into clicking a link from Outlook.  It’s a ‘warning’ that your mailbox is near it’s size limit.

The message was a little sophisticated by pretending to come from the real company that handles the domain.  It was sent to an address with a domain managed by GoDaddy (the hackers have used public records to find domains and which company manages them).

The email is a scam.

Spelling Mistakes

The first red flag is the spelling mistake in the heading.

The others are the wrong capitalization of the company name and the ‘From’ email address uses a different domain name.

Check the link

Always check the real underlying link in an email message. Is it really what it pretends to be?

The link in the message wasn’t to a GoDaddy site.  In Outlook, hovering the mouse shows the real url that you’d open if foolish enough to click the link.

We didn’t try the link but most likely they want to trick people into entering your password so they can hijack your email account for a touch of identity theft.  Or perhaps the web page loads some malicious software onto your computer.  Whatever it is, we’re not going anywhere near it and neither should you <g>.

Caution and Two-Factor Authentication

The way to protect against these attacks (other than your native suspicion and caution) is two-factor authentication.

Even if you accidentally give away your password the criminals would still need the second authentication code.  Since those codes only last for a minute, they are useless to anyone else.