Verify Hotmail account - is it a scam?

A couple of days back Moss sends me a message asking my 2 cents worth on the Hotmail verification email he received. Since then I got two more on the same issue. I requested them for a copy of the email. Now I don't want to repeat the whole darn thing here but in short, the recipients were asked, almost threatened, to verify their Hotmail accounts else the access would be stopped. Unless one knows a little about fraudulent email and phishing messages, one can get fooled easily. The email had scam written all over it because:

• It wasn't addressed to the recipient; in fact, the recipient was required to send in their names to verify the account.
• Recipient was asked to provide their full name, email address, password, security question and the answer... and all this information had to be send over email back to the sender... how lame!
• The senders' email address was kind of cloaked but still a giveaway.

The only information the fraudsters have is the email address which they can get easily from the web -personal or business profile pages, twitter accounts etc. It's good that Moss and the others contacted me because the email was not from the Hotmail service. As far as I know, Hotmail has never asked subscribers to verify their email accounts. Yes, you would need to enter your password if you want to reset it or answer the security question if you've lost the password but all this is never through email - email account management and administration takes place on the Hotmail web site!

So if you too have received such as message in which you are threatened with closure of email account unless you verify the Hotmail account, ignore it and mark it as spam/junk. Never fall for scam and fraudulent emails. And if something does look genuine, remember to spend a couple of minutes scanning its contents. Check the reply email address and do not send sensitive information over email. Instead contact the support staff at Hotmail (or the other services) and let them know of it.

Verify Hotmail email account when you send email

Is Hotmail asking you to verify the account each time you send email? This is because the system wants to improve and determine whether you are an actual human user or an automated spambot out to abuse the email service by sending out tons of unsolicited messages. For details and possible solutions, please read that blog post.