There are legitimate services that, when set up, will send you voice mail alerts by email. Livewire Entertainment is one, onebox is another, and I’m sure there are others still doing this.
In these examples, Livewire will send you an email from the domain indicating who the message is from and how long it is. If less than a certain length, the file is attached and is a wave file.
Onebox can be customized for mp3 delivery and works the same way, except that it is coming from your account.
Did you know that actors are using this type of notification too? I’ve actually seen these, and the giveaway is that I wasn’t expecting any voice mail, and in most cases, they aren’t sent from a provider that does this. It is sent from some random address.
In one other case, Philmore Voice Mail, the email is a little different. This service does allow you to send messages to your email, but you don’t get email automatically for each message. It is also sent as a link to one of their domains. The email does come from one of their domains too.
I mention this for those who are over there so you understand what you’re looking for.
In this article that I saw yesterday and will be blogging today, Komando staff talk about this clever use of convenience to trick people to give up their credentials to their Microsoft account.
The advice is the same as in past articles, using 2-factor, strong passwords, antivirus and the like.
To learn more about this new tricky method which I’ve seen, Watch for this fake voicemail notification trying to steal your Outlook password is the article title. It isn’t necessarily new, but it must be making a comeback. People aren’t necessarily looking for these and its a good reminder of what’s out there.
Stay safe!
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