My Hotmail account had this message:

Dear Account Owner

This message is from our data base center to all Hotmail account owners. We are currently upgrading our data base and e-mail account center. We are deleting all unused accounts to create more space for new accounts. To prevent your account from closing, you will have to update it below so we will know that it's a presently used account. To do this, You have to click on your reply button to reply back to this message and then you fill the information below.
* Name:
* Username:
* Password:
* Date of Birth:
* Country Or Territory:


Warning!!! Account owner that fails to verify his/her account after two weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.

AFTER VERIFICATION,A MESSAGE WILL BE SENT TO YOU AFTER WHICH YOU ARE ADVISED TO CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD IMMEDIATELY.


Sincerely,
The Windows Live Hotmail Team

Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
USA

Is this legit, or an attack?

__________________
1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

Yes, NEVER send your password by email.

They should never ask for it this way.

Never respond to any emails similar to this until you do a search on google for a similar version, most of the time there are many versions.

DELETE them.

Revolverman.

phishing

if you do not use your hotmail for over 90 days they delete your account automatically so there really is no reason for them to send this message out.

A microsoft site says it tries to install malware on your system. Virus check your
system. The active content may have been previously neutralized. The content from the link below is the same as your e-mail.

http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/Offtopic/thread/49671a3e-da27-4c3c-b253-f4b5e502dd73

If you read carefully you'll see some grammatical mistakes in the text. While the bad guys getting better, these are still common hallmarks. Examples: "data base" vice "database", "presently used account" is a bit awkward, punctuation and capitalization errors. These aren't perfect indicators, but they help.

Do not rely on things like "hovering" over the hyperlink to see if it's a legit link since it may go to something that appears okay but is really off; e.g ww3.hotmailaccount.com/privacy/ or there may be legitimate links to hotmail's site.

You can separately look for hotmail's privacy or piracy site and report it, or simply delete it.

Oh - and I thought MS stopped the 90 days inactive delete thing a while back. Maybe not, but storage is cheap nowadays.

Not an attack focused on you, but standard dangers of the Internet and e-mail.

We have this mail in the Netherlands to.
The (automatic) translation in Dutch is hilarious.

Rob

Thanks all.

__________________
1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

yep it's phishing I only use my hotmail now for messenger service.

__________________
hum.....
1987 300TD 311,000M Stolen. Presumed destroyed

When I try to sign in, I get a message that says:
You have agreed to open the file default.aspx
What do you want to do?

Open with__
Save File


At this point I decline everything and close the hotmail.

__________________
1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

Update your antivirus signature, then run a full system scan. DO NOT click on any "security pop ups" unles you are sure they are dialog boxes from the Anti-virus installed on your machine. These are being used more and more to trick people into "solving" a non-existent problem that actually creates the problem.

You may want to start a new thread in OD with "Computer virus - need help removing" or something similar.