Got this email today

[j2mcgreg]

This email from Microsoft One Drive came this morning:

Your xxxxxxxxx@gmail.com personal account has been unused for two years and is currently frozen. Your files are still there, but your OneDrive and all files saved to that account will be deleted on or after 12/13/2023 3:36:42 PM unless you sign into OneDrive to reactivate it.

Unfortunately this email is of the no reply type because I'd really like to tell them where they can shove their One Drive.

[Eadwine Rose]

Oh.. got the same thing. I was like "good". Never used it anyway. :)

[thomasl]

@j2mcgreg I am probably being thick (and also not a user of OneDrive AFAIK) but what has your @gmail.com (ie Google) account to do with MS?

Or put differently how does MS know that your @gmail.com account has been unused for two years?

[CharlesV]

Actually @thomasl I think you have a great question. The wording on that email sound fishy enough to possibly be a phish attempt!

[Eadwine Rose]

No scam, check the headers.

[fan_of_LTS]

The confusion regarding possible phishing is precisely why I get angry with providers that require an email address as a username. A quick check of my KeePass XC shows that my HSA, a stockholder account, and a major government agency required me to use a valid email as username. If/when they are breached, I expect some fairly believable phishing. I use a never published email account just for financial stuff so if I start to receive junk/spam/obvious phishing I will know to change account passwords but things are not getting better out there. :(

My OneDrive files are now gone.

[j2mcgreg]

Actually @thomasl I think you have a great question. The wording on that email sound fishy enough to possibly be a phish attempt!

Nope. Microsoft has my email address because I designated it as my emergency contact info for those instances when I get locked out of my one Win 11 computer because Microsoft has decided my pin is no longer valid. It's happened a couple of times in the last 18 months and probably because I only boot it up around income tax time.

[CharlesV]

Actually @thomasl I think you have a great question. The wording on that email sound fishy enough to possibly be a phish attempt!

Nope. Microsoft has my email address because I designated it as my emergency contact info for those instances when I get locked out of my one Win 11 computer because Microsoft has decided my pin is no longer valid. It's happened a couple of times in the last 18 months and probably because I only boot it up around income tax time.

Ya, get that.. .just the message in that email sounded a little weird, and I am seeing / working with people every day that get emails that are 'a little off' ... I am probably too highly on alert -/

[CharlesV]

The confusion regarding possible phishing is precisely why I get angry with providers that require an email address as a username. A quick check of my KeePass XC shows that my HSA, a stockholder account, and a major government agency required me to use a valid email as username. If/when they are breached, I expect some fairly believable phishing. I use a never published email account just for financial stuff so if I start to receive junk/spam/obvious phishing I will know to change account passwords but things are not getting better out there. :(

My OneDrive files are now gone.

Indeed, not everyone can, but imo everyone SHOULD have different emails for many things. And banking / financial is one of those. I have setup eight email accounts that are just for banking, insurance and important places. (different emails for different places) and anything that comes 'from my bank' to any other email I know is bogus - just by its arrival.

[Adrian]

No scam, check the headers.

BTW, talking about scam, I was almost been had, I got an email presumably from pCloud (I used them briefly in the past) with the "Enjoy an Extra 2TB Our Gift to You!" that email came from a mlsend.com email address that I guess though sometime companies use for email campaigns. To get the 2TB you need to install a pClould add on and give access to your account which of course is weird... I added it because I didn't have any files in the pClould, just to see how it looked/behaved. The add on has all the correct logos and verbiage but of course it was not from pCloud, I reported to them, hope they blocked that add-on.

So first clue this was a scam was the mlsend.com email (and of course the fact that they wanted to give me something for free -- but that sometime happens).

The second clue was that I needed to install an add-on but again that's what something you need to do. Otherwise there was no way to see where that add on was from it said from @ pClould.com had the logo of the company, it looked completely legit at first and even ulterior looks... so be careful with this kind of things, you don't want to give access to your cloud and files to "addons".