A client and friend of mine sent me the following screenshot, asking me if the email was genuine.
A quick analysis:
1)”…we strongly recommend that you verify you are not a rebot.”
Not a what? I read that threat actors nowadays are using AI to polish this kind of fake emails.
This one apparently did not use AI.
2) Same as above, “Verify i am not a robot.” The use of lowercase ‘i’ raises suspicion.
3) The sending email adddress and the recipient email address are the same. It’s like you are warning yourself that you will delete your own dormant account[sic]. If it were a genuine message, it would come from a hosting provider’s address or similar.
4) The content of the email is strange.
First, it says “In order to keep your email active on the [email address] server…” An email address is not a server. A genuine email talking about a server would probably specify something like something . servername . com
Second, no one cares if you buy hosting and leave it idle. No one is deleting a client’s dormant accounts on a paid service.
5) I could have told him to hover his mouse over the button and check the status bar to see where the link points to, but the above clues were enough for me to tell him that the email was fake and not to click the link.