Scam email sent from my own email address

Question

I received a scam email in my Outlook junk folder titled "You've been hacked". The message begins:

"Hello pervert, I've sent this message from your Microsoft account. I want to inform you about a very bad situation for you. However, you can benefit from it, if you will act wisеly."

The scammer is asking for money and claims to have sent the message from my own account. This seems completely bogus (the message isn't in my "Sent" box and the user icon is Same).

I am very concerned that Outlook DOES show the sender's email as being my OWN email address.

Surely bogus sender addresses should NEVER be displayed as this will make it easy for scammers to fool people? I think Microsoft needs to do something to prevent this from happening, because it's going to confuse a lot of vulnerable people.

Answer 1

Domain spoofing (AKA making it look like an email is sent from any address you choose) is very easy, you just need your own SMTP email server and you can write anything you want in the 'From' field.

For more info:

https://www.howtogeek.com/427152/why-can-you-get-spam-from-your-own-email-address/

Ignore this, never reply or acknowledge any scam email. They are alwys purchased or taken from a data breach and these people send out thousands of the same email, only takes 1 person to be fooled and they win.

Answer 2

Dear adityakedia87

Thanks for using Microsoft products and posting in the community.

I sympathize with what you're going through, and I can understand your fear.

But don't worry, we've found out that a lot of hackers are doing this nowadays, which has led to users coming back to us with this information.

Let's confirm the information of your email, you can follow the steps below:1 Select the email, click on the “...” of the email.

2 Select “View”, “View Email Source”.

3 In the email source, find the location of the following picture, this is the original IP and sender.

 

You can check if it's your mailbox information, if it is, it means your account may be hacked, you need to change your mailbox password, and then check if there is any abnormal rule or whether it's set to forward to the mailbox you don't know.

If your mailbox is outlook mailbox, you can log in your account on web account.Microsoft.com, then click security-view login information, check whether there is any abnormal login information, if there is, you can take the way to improve the security level of your account, use Microsoft Authenticator and 2FA to protect the security of your account.

Download Microsoft Authenticator - Microsoft Support

I hope the above information can help you.

Looking forward to your reply.

Best wishes

Clark | Microsoft Community Support Specialist

Answer 3

I have received the same email and at the spot you specified, I see my own Email Address, however I can't find a successful login to my account the was suspicious (The unusual attempts for login were all failed). Does that mean that it's a case of spoofing, or do I still have to worry that my account was hacked?

I also forgot to mention, but in my case I see "X-SID-Result: FAIL" just after the line with "X-SID-Pra"

Answer 4

Same case here.

In the "viem email source" I see my own Email address but then "X-SID-Result: FAIL" just after the line with "X-SID-Pra".

This means my account hasn't been hacked?

Answer 5

I have now the same problem- so have you‘ve been hacked?