I guess I can confess two things to you all. One, I am not as computer savvy as I could be. I learn as I go along, and I think I know more than some people.
Two, I still have an old Hotmail account. To be precise, I have 3 free Hotmail accounts, and one account I pay for to get extra storage.
The one I pay for gave me this message apparently yesterday:
I now realize it may have been a scam. But FWIW, I did click on the link, and got this message:
Two questions. Was it a scam? And did I dodge a bullet by not having it infect my computer (Google Drive to the rescue?)? And if I ever do have to update my Hotmail account, how do I do it? I mean, you wouldn’t believe how many websites are tied to that very old Hotmail account. Every website and company I have connection to. Including some I may have even forgotten about. How do I turn over to a new email account en masse basically?
And I have ask again, was it a scam and am I okay now per Google Drive?
My off-the-cuff not-on-the-job (I am an IT expert, but I am not YOUR IT expert) opinion: it was indeed a phishing attempt, but the maldoc (malware document) hosted on Google Drive got caught and removed, so the attempt got pre-empted.
One valuable hint: there is exactly zero chance in hell that Microsoft would route their email management process through Google Drive. That may even have been detectable if you had looked at the link before clicking it, but sometimes malware links redirect through compromised computers or free redirect/URL shortening services, so maybe not.
Unless they bad guys are playing extra-deep 4d chess, nothing bad happened, and you hopefully learned a valuable lesson. DON’T CLICK LINKS IN UNSOLICITED EMAILS! (And, be dang cautious about solicited/expected ones.)
Links to Google Drive are a major resource used by scammers.
You have to ask??? Good grief, why would MS link to a Google Drive account???
Do NOT EVER click links in emails. Not even from family members, etc. Their accounts may have been breached. Go to the site directly on your own in another tab.
