You clicked on that phish?

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ON SECURITY By Susan Bradley It happens. You fell for it. You clicked on something you shouldn’t have. You followed a link. You entered your password
[See the full post at: You clicked on that phish?]

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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lmacri, fisher75, Norio, SueW, DLivesInTexas, ctRanger, Alex5723

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I found today’s newsletter to be exceptionally informative. All of the articles are fascinating and helpful. Kudos to the team!

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rizzquery, Susan Bradley

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Hi Susan:

Thanks for another informative article.

I checked the Recent Activity on my Microsoft Account at https://account.live.com/Activity per the link in your article and was astounded at the number of failed login attempts just yesterday from Russia, China, Brazil, etc. I don’t know why I was so surprised, given the number of emails sent to my outlook.com email account that are blocked or automatically flagged as spam by the Microsoft spam filters.

NOTE: The Have I Been Pwned site at https://haveibeenpwned.com/ confirms that Microsoft email address (which is not my primary email address I use for important correspondence) as been exposed in multiple data breaches, including hacks of the Adobe and Malwarebytes forums in 2013 and 2014, respectively.

Fortunately, there was no activity listed in the Unusual Activity section of my Microsoft Account described in the support article What is the Recent Activity Page? so these failed login attempts are not an immediate cause for concern, but I’ll have to sit down and go through my Microsoft Account settings to see if I need to bump up my security settings beyond the 2FA I’ve already set up for that account.
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Dell Inspiron 15 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.5011 * Firefox v132.0.2 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.24090.11-1.1.24090.11 * Malwarebytes Premium v5.2.1.144-1.0.5088 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7783

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TechTango

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lmacri wrote:

I checked the Recent Activity on my Microsoft Account at https://account.live.com/Activity per the link in your article and was astounded at the number of failed login attempts just yesterday from Russia, China, Brazil, etc.

…

Fortunately, there was no activity listed in the Unusual Activity section of my Microsoft Account described in the support article What is the Recent Activity Page? so these failed login attempts are not an immediate cause for concern, but I’ll have to sit down and go through my Microsoft Account settings to see if I need to bump up my security settings beyond the 2FA I’ve already set up for that account.

There’s nothing you can do to reduce the number of failed login attempts.

I get 20 unsuccessful sign-in attempts from other continents every day even though my Microsoft Account has NO password and I use a passkey with face or fingerprint.

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TechTango, lmacri

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lmacri wrote:

astounded at the number of failed login attempts just yesterday from Russia, China, Brazil, etc.

Yikes.  Excellent detail.

I do not use Outlook and my Windows 10 installation is a local account.  I signed into my MS account and found only two logins from past 30 days, but both from me and no failed logins from any other sources.  My Microsoft email address is a “disposable” address though my Yahoo email and not used for any other website.

I checked this address via  https://haveibeenpwned.com/ and got “no pwnage found”

Thanks for your post on the subject.  Very helpful.

Desktop Asus TUF X299 Mark 1, CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz, RAM: 32GB, GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Display: Four 27" 1080p screens 2 over 2 quad.

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Susan, you stated that “the best thing to do is to call the credit card company, change the card number …”.

My understanding is that credit card companies, as a convenience for vendors with subscribers with automatic purchases, automatically send credit card updates those vendors thereby completely disabling the value of having the credit card cancelled and re-issued.  Am I mistaken?

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As fraudulent transactions are unlikely to be regular automatic purchases, this won’t be an issue. But, as always, you should check your purchases on your statement before paying the CC debt.

cheers, Paul

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