Email scams abound. They’re usually designed to get your personal financial information, access to your email account or trick you into giving away your hard-earned dollars. A new email scam targets Hotmail users and attempts to get the victim’s login and password information. Often, compromised accounts are used to distribute spam or expose the victim to greater identity theft.
The scam in question is delivered in the form of an email message that tries to persuade the victim to “confirm” his or her Hotmail account. To confirm the account, the user is directed to a page and asked to provide the account’s login ID and password. The information is collected and the account is officially compromised.
To avoid email scams like this one, here are a few simple tips.
If you have a free email account, your provider may indeed disable accounts that are inactive for long periods of time. Check with your free email account provider to determine their policies on inactive accounts. Ask whether and how they will notify you if your account is in danger of being classified as inactive.
If your account is active, don’t respond to requests to “confirm” or “verify” your account. There’s no need to do this for an active account.
Don’t follow links embedded in email, since embedded links can appear to take to you one location, and actually deposit you somewhere else. If you need to go to a Web site to log into an account, enter the site address manually into your browser.
Don’t provide your email login and password to anyone. The provider has no reason to ask you for your password. If you have been duped into providing this information, contact the provider and ask them to disable your account.