Microsoft account unusual sign in activity?

Tommatt

Got an email from what appears to be Microsoft and appears to be legit, but I've never seen anything like this. Has anybody got this email before? Is it legit?


Microsoft account
Unusual sign-in activity
We detected something unusual about a recent sign-in to the Microsoft account us*****@yahoo.com. To help keep you safe, we required an extra security challenge.
Sign-in details:
Country/region: United States
IP address: 166.137.213.71
Date: 5/16/2014 2:53 AM (GMT)
If this was you, then you can safely ignore this email.
If you're not sure this was you, a malicious user might have your password. Please review your recent activity and we'll help you take corrective action.
Review recent activity
To opt out or change where you receive security notifications, click here.
Thanks,
The Microsoft account team

Polaritie

Generally speaking, the safest answer to this is to go the company's website (microsoft.com), find customer service, and get in touch with them - they'll be able to tell you if it's fake. Any contact information in the communication itself should be considered suspect (same for email links, etc.), so look it up independently. (This is basically adapting advice for handling unexpected bank phone calls - find their number and call back to verify. You can't trust the source of incoming communications, but you can be sure that when you initiate it where its going).

That said... that seems unlikely to be a phishing attempt since it doesn't look to be directing you anywhere - it's just "heads up, something odd happened".

Tommatt

In the email itself there is a link, on my phone copying it shows an account.live.com URL which seems legit, but I'm at work and can't go the page (the live site hates my phone I know that)

The big thing is I've never gotten anything like this even when I was having issues logging in, and what exactly is unusual activity they detected? I'm about to check my CC, but I haven't gotten any emails about purchases.

It all seems legit at first read, just odd, unless my ex decided to try and log in for some reason but she hasn't done anything like that, so not sure why she would a year later.

Mainly just curious if anybody has gotten anything like this until I can look into it better at home.

baudattitude

That IP maps back to an AT&T DSL line in Long Beach. So if that's you and you were logging in at around 5 PM Pacific time (Probably off by an hour either way, I'm not good at GMT -> PDT), then this is probably OK.

Tommatt

baudattitude wrote: »

That IP maps back to an AT&T DSL line in Long Beach. So if that's you and you were logging in at around 5 PM Pacific time (Probably off by an hour either way, I'm not good at GMT -> PDT), then this is probably OK.

This may actually help. Sometime around there, I think, my phone opened up the smart glass app by mistake, which I immediately closed. I have AT&T for my cell service, so that AT&T DSL Line in Long beach could be that, although I was way far away from long beach.

Tommatt

Ok, just checked their site, I don't think this was me.

Security challengeToday 2:53 AMNot available
IP address
Unknown
Device/platform
Xbox
Browser/app
Unknown
Was this you? Let us know.

So this was an actual security challenge from an Xbox right?

harvest

I've had a similar notice once. Because my email address is (firstname).(lastname)@gmail.com someone else with my same name was trying to log in to Live, presumably because they assumed they had forgotten their Live credentials and were trying all the email addresses they had (or thought they had).

I'm not saying the activity on your account right now is harmless, just saying that I've received such an email before.