General Chat

Is Windows Live sending out a letter to every hotmail email user saying they are shutting down some accounts and asking us to verify our username, password, d.o.b. and country? I have just done so and now wonder if it might have been a scam. What should I do?

Huia.

I dont know but I had one from the bank this morning and they dont have my e-mail addy

I dont know what you should do ....

I have that message several times saying if I dont verify the account will be cancelled. I think its a scam as i regularly use Hotmail. i deleted the message each time

You have just given free access to your account,plus your date of birth!!!!

who to??

check out Windows Live website or Snopes site you look to be scammed....!

It looks like a phishing scam.

Have a look on here

http://windowslivehelp.com/thread.aspx?threadid=178f53b5-2cc5-4ac0-89c8-c437f4bf0290

Change your password as quickly as you can, and hope that they haven't got there first and locked you out.

I rang my IT nephew and he is going to contact Windows to see what can be done. Luckily I dont do internet banking. I dont know if they have changed my password or if I might have changed it a few months ago and forgotten what I changed it to! Why do I have to have these senior moments? I should have cottoned on to the fact that they did not need to know those things. AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!

Huia.

http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_310529


This is the Australian government web page all about scams and related information.

Yes you can look at it. It is very much recommended in Australia.

Yes, it appears to be a scam.

Huia.

Hi Huiathebird,

So sorry to hear you’ve been scammed, I’m afraid it can happen so easily these days we have so much on our minds that sometimes we take our eye off the ball for a moment and get caught, these people know just how to catch people off guard!

I assume from your 10.10 post that you have now found yourself locked out. Hopefully your Nephew can sort it out, but meantime it would be worth contacting as many of your contacts as you can remember via another account. Either open another free one with someone like Yahoo, or get a friend to use their account to warn your contacts to treat any emails from your old address as suspicious.
Best wishes,
Mayfield.

ANY email which asks you to verify your details (e.g. Username, Password, DoB, Mother's maiden name, Place of Birth, etc.) is almost certainly a scam.

The genuine organisation already has your details, so there in NEVER any need to get you to verify them.

Yes, Brian, as soon as I clicked on send I realised that. I was just having a senior moment, as Mayfield says it is so easy to be caught off guard.

I can still get into my emails to read them, and can send them (I sent myself one at a different email addy) but when I try to change my password I cant remember the old one, or the scumball has changed it. I click on 'forgotten password' and click on 'send reminder to alternative address' but my alternative addy hasnt received it.

I tried to open an account with gmail but every time I copy those wiggly letters it tells me 'wrong, try again'. Maybe I will try yahoo, if it is free. Dont want to spend too much money on these things.

Huia, the bald bird (not an eagle) .

I now have an email addy at both yahoo and gmail. I have used the gmail one to send an email with photo attached to my children. It seems to work fine, so will probably use that instead of hotmail. Now if I could just print off my list of contacts from hotmail instead of having to copy them laboriously one by one. They used to have the email addies of my contacts showing so I could print off the pages of them but I cant find how to do it now, it just shows their names until I click on one of them then I just get the details of that one :((((

Huia.

I think I would contact all in my contacts with that account, to let them know I am not using that account any more, and that I had been scammed and for them to not open any mail from that address in future. Then delet as much as I could off it. I'd use another address after that. Hope you can smooth it out

I have just finished copying about 200 addies and deleting most of them. I left 16 but changed them so that if scumball tries sending them emails he will find they bounce back. And I hope they hit him where it really hurts! (It has to be a him, doesnt it? No woman would do such things). Of course I am possibly shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Huia.

Just a thought Huiathebird.
Did you have any emails in your account from companies you have bought from on line that hold credit card details on their system? If so I would log on and change your password and the registered email address, for that account. Perhaps I’m being a bit overcautious but that’s what I would do.

Best wishes,
Mayfield.

I dont buy things online, apart from certs and subs to this site and my internet server. I cant see scumball wanting to buy certs! I did change my login details on this site as it had the same password as my email site.

Huia.

Actually, I have come to the conclusion that I changed my password last year and had forgotten, so gave out the wrong one anyway! But as I have ticked 'remember me' and never log out the other person might have been able to get in to my account. I must find out how to untick it, and remember to log out each time now that I have changed the password again (and noted down the details in a notebook!).

Huia.

OK, I now have to type in my password every time to get into hotmail. Unfortunately I chose a loooooong one! I wont need to be in a hurry to check my emails or send one from there.

Huia.

Just as an added precaution, it may be wise to contact your credit card service to advise them that your card number may have been compromised and request replacement cards along with passwords etc.

The next logical step for a scam would be for you to receive a message purporting to be from a certificate subscription service etc requiring confirmation of your card details & pin as a previous attempt at verification had failed !!

You could even find a request from your ""Card supplier"" appologising for any distress caused while requiring that you inform them by return as to your card number and pin for the new card which you should now have received!

This would seem quite plausible if you had recently ordered any BMDs from someone.

Consider very carefully any request for information such as passwords etc since these are your security.
Would you tell someone on the telephone what your home alarm codes were?

Any similar e-mails should cause you to immediately close that message then open the requisite company home page, log in and check it out.......DON'T use any URL address supplied by the message to contact a home page as it is likely to be false.

It's easy to be wise after the event so you would negate any possible losses by changing any of your possibly affected cards.

Be careful out there!!