Hadn't been on my Hotmail account for a couple of weeks, just opened and found the following email:

This e-mail has been sent to you by Hotmail to inform you that your account has been blocked.


Why are you seeing this? Someone may have used your account to send out a lot of junk messages (or something else that violates the Windows Live Terms of Service).

We're here to help you get your account back. What do you need to do?

We'll ask you to login to our secured activation page by following the link below and re-activate your account.
<link removed>
If you have already confirmed your account information then please disregard this message.

Regards,
WindowsLive Hotmail

Often customers get here because someone else has access to your account and are using it without your knowledge to send spam. To protect you and your contacts, we've removed any Hotmail auto-replies or linked accounts you may have had.

Is this legit? Only ask because surely if they've blocked my account I wouldn't have received another 20 odd emails after this one would I? I've not been told by anyone in my address book that junk has been sent from my account. Don't want to click the link until I know it's legit, obviously.

Can you go to Hotmail by typing it in and login OK?

What, that link in the middle or my normal Hotmail? I logged in as usual, again if the account had been blocked, wouldn't I have got a message saying 'sorry, you can't log in, contact support to reactivate' or words to that effect?

Don't open any links in that email. Report it to hotmail. I think you can forward it to them mark it. They should let you know if its genuine or not

Yep, don't click on the link, always type in the hotmail login link yourself.


Yep, if you logged on ok as normal to hotmail without clicking on that link, then you're not blocked. It's a spammy methinks.

That's what I thought, but thought I'd check with people other than eldest daughter. Thanks. I'll forward it to them.

Googled it, consensus is it's a scam.

There's an option on hotmail to mark mail as "phishing scam".

Cool, thanks. I did that.

Might be good to remove the link.

Indeed. I ummed and ahhed for ages whether to include it in the first place.

Well, we're all still alive and here! Phew.

Forward it to Abuse@..... email account, every major operator has one to deal with these kinds of things.

My dad had this a few months ago. It is legit.

It stems from surfing too many lesbian based porn sites.

If you follow the instructions they will reactivate (which I had to do for him). He got a virus on his PC that then sent heaps of virus emails to his contact list. After the first few hundred messages were sent out Hotmail blocked his account. I would suggest running a scan of your pc and then sending me all of your lesbian porn

Sorry I dumped all that yesterday. I may have some giraffe based stuff if that floats your boat.

Would have been a better alternative to Linda Lovelace in Deep Throat, I reckon!