{"id":2185,"date":"2025-08-21T14:59:38","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T21:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/phishbowl\/?p=2185"},"modified":"2025-08-21T15:04:24","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T22:04:24","slug":"authenticate-your-account-activity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/phishbowl\/2025\/08\/21\/authenticate-your-account-activity\/","title":{"rendered":"Authenticate Your Account Activity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n<p>This is a classic account deactivation phish that pretends to be from Microsoft Office 365. It creates a false sense of urgency and threatens you with account deactivation to trick you into hastily clicking the link. However, if you hover over the big red &#8220;VERIFY NOW&#8221; link, you will find that it goes to a site that isn&#8217;t from Microsoft (or UVic). Other signs that something isn&#8217;t right about this email include the awkward wording\/bad grammar and the long random text in the sender address and subject. If you manage to find the end of the sender address after all that random text, you can then see that the sender is not from UVic or Microsoft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"969\" height=\"487\" src=\"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/phishbowl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4983\/2025\/08\/2025-08-21-authenticate-your-account-activity-1.png\" alt=\"A fake Office 365 email that threatens to deactivate your account unless you click the phishing link to verify it now\" class=\"wp-image-2188\" aria-describedby=\"phishtranscript\" srcset=\"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/phishbowl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4983\/2025\/08\/2025-08-21-authenticate-your-account-activity-1.png 969w, https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/phishbowl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4983\/2025\/08\/2025-08-21-authenticate-your-account-activity-1-300x151.png 300w, https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/phishbowl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4983\/2025\/08\/2025-08-21-authenticate-your-account-activity-1-768x386.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 969px) 100vw, 969px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\" id=\"phishtranscript\">\n<p>From: &lt;SysadminSExchangeServerGE8YI27DX[&#8230;long random text omitted]<br>Subject: Authenticate Your Account Activity #42e77c85919f7bec71588667c799a78f<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Office 365<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Attention [username redacted]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As part of our scheduled security and compliance process, we will be deactivating inactive Microsoft accounts on August 22, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Please verify your account status <strong>([redacted]@uvic.ca),<\/strong> remains active by completing the verification below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Link: VERIFY NOW]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To avoid any disruption, complete this verification within 48hrs. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a classic account deactivation phish that pretends to be from Microsoft Office 365. It creates a false sense of urgency and threatens you with account deactivation to trick you into hastily clicking the link. However, if you hover over the big red &#8220;VERIFY NOW&#8221; link, you will find that it goes to a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/phishbowl\/2025\/08\/21\/authenticate-your-account-activity\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Authenticate Your Account Activity<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8719,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","hentry","category-uncategorized","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/phishbowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/phishbowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/phishbowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/phishbowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8719"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/phishbowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2185"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/phishbowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2191,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/phishbowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185\/revisions\/2191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/phishbowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/phishbowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca\/phishbowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}