New Phishing Alert: Free Windows 8 Offer

With the big bang launch of Windows 8 by Microsoft, a new round of spam mails are on circulation in the internet purporting Microsoft and offering a free copy of the version, warns security firm, Sophos.

The email bears the title "Microsoft Windows 8 Team," and the content entails the message that being a member of the Microsoft window vital user, the offer of Window 8 is free. And to obtain the same, one has to click the Microsoft Window 8 premium link below and submit all information on the webpage and click update and hence Window 8 will be updated.

It seems that the Microsoft Windows 8 Team truly wants users to access a link that supposedly points to the Windows 8 update. Nevertheless, in reality, the site concealed in the link is a part of the intellectual phishing scam.

However, according to the experts at Sophos, users clicking on the link are taken to a page "webmail verification" site hosted on a server from Slovakia asking information like username, password (twice), e-mail address, and domain server name.

While addressing the issue at the Sophos blog, Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant with the Company said that if a careless user is pertinent in this case to hand over the keys to criminals, as accords a statement published in nakedsecurity.sophos.com on October 29, 2012.

He also adds that in case of lack of confidence on the employees, it is advisable to invest in a security solution that would properly protect the users from all such e-mails.

It is quite evident that Microsoft would never send an unsolicited e-mail that requests a person to click on a link that can procure a free Windows OS update. Thus, security experts recommended that Windows operating systems should always be updated through Windows Update system.

However, this latest scam is similar to another scam that hit users recently in mid October 2012 when e-mails purporting to be from Microsoft claimed that the Windows installation records were obsolete and therefore must be updated immediately.

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» SPAMfighter News - 11/6/2012