This has become a popular subject in the Answers Forums in recent months, so its time to weigh in on it. This popularity is due to an onslaught of Phishing emails that suggest your Microsoft Account has been compromised. It looks something like this:
Another popular Phish says one of your email accounts will be closed due to inactivity:
ALL OF THESE ARE FAKES!!!! Microsoft DOES NOT send emails like this with clickable links in them, nor does Microsoft have any ability to close a Gmail (or any other ISPs) email account. The one thing all these Phishing emails have in common are links to click to report/fix the situation and these links will launch pre-addressed emails to somewhere far removed from Microsoft. These emails will alert the Bad Guys that they have a live person on the far end that they can now swamp with more Phishing, Spam, etc. You always have the ability to check your account for login activity.
Unintended Confusion
While you can, indeed, check your account for login activity, many folks find the results alarming because there are likely going to be MANY UNSUCCESFUL login attempts:
Protocol: IMAP Time: 1 hour ago
IP: 117.86.9.222 Approximate location: China
Account alias: Type: Unsuccessful sync
*****@live.com
Upon seeing these reports, a good many people panic! They’ve enabled 2FA and repeatedly changed their passwords, only to continue to see these reports and are convinced they’ve been hacked. This is incorrect. As long as the Type: continues to say Unsuccessful, there is no hacking to deal with, the account is and remains secure. So, what can you do to stop them? Well, you can delete the email account, but that’s really not a solution because any new email account you open will be subject to the same attempts. What you want is for those attempts to remain UNSUCCESSFUL which again means no hacking and your account is secure.
