A nasty scam email from 'Microsoft'

A visitor to our home today showed me the below email, supposedly from Microsoft, and asked if I could check if it was real or a scam.  

By touching and holding on the link on her iPhone (not tapping on the link), I could view the webpage that would be opened by the link and see that it was going to take her to a dodgy website - so the email was definitely NOT legitimate. The fact that it did not include the name of the account holder, and that the 'To' email address was not the account holder were other easy identifiers of a fraudulent email.

In most cases, an email such as this is just trying to get you to click the link and then, when you are taken to an authentic looking 'login' web page (for example, an Outlook sign in page), get you to sign in and give away your login details (and perhaps access to your email account).

I actually clicked on the link on my Mac to see where it would take me, and see if my Mac detected that it was a 'phishing' page.

This particular scam email did a nasty thing.  It took me to a web page with a pop-up that asked me to click the link to 'verify' the account.  I could not close down that pop-up box without clicking the link, and I could not get back to any other web pages while it was showing.

The window with the popup locked up my web browsing session - so that the only option I seemed to have was to click that button (and goodness knows what would have happened if that button had been clicked).

Even closing down the web browser using Force Quit, then re-opening did not solve the problem, despite choosing the option to not re-open the previously open pages.  Some hidden files needed to be removed to rectify the problem and allow me to start using the browser again.

So, once again, be very careful not to click any links in emails that ask you to verify any sort of online account - unless you are absolutely certain that you did something to initiation the email.

If you are unsure, definitely don't click it.  You can always forward it to iTandCoffee (enquiry@itandcoffee.com.au) and we will have a look to see if it is a legitimate email.