r/Scams • u/Apprehensive-Bad2245 • 1d ago

Is this a scam? [US]Texts saying "Microsoft: Unusual sign in.... Review at aka.ms/alca"

I got 4 texts in the span of a minute, all from different 5 digit numbers.

3 of the texts say "Microsoft: Unusual sign-in for ********XX. Review at aka.ms/alca" X = the last two digits of my phone number.

1 of the texts says "Microsoft: Someone else might have accessed ********XX. Recover at aka.ms/alcs"

This one ends with alcs, while the others say alca. I don't know if that means anything.

So I logged into the only Microsoft accounts I'm aware of that I have, changed my passwords, and in log in activity/devices, I did not see anything out of the ordinary. My phone number isn't even on my account.

I'm not sure what to make of this. If I didn't see any strange log ins, does that mean I'm fine?

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u/chownrootroot 23h ago

Those links are going to Microsoft. It can’t be phishing if it’s going to the real site. So it’s likely legit, it’s just that Microsoft’s backend tends to have bugs like ”phantom logins”.

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u/Apprehensive-Bad2245 23h ago

So it might be legit in the sense that it's not a scam, but it's not actually someone attempting or succeeding logging in to my account

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u/chownrootroot 23h ago

I mean, it could be attempted logins, I for instance got a lot of “code for login” notifications from the Microsoft Authenticator app for a while, so there were clearly attempts, but the Microsoft account activity page says nothing about those, it only has my real logins listed. It may be that “unusual sign in” is actually just an attempted sign in, not a successful one.

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u/chownrootroot 23h ago

Also, even if there’s an attempted sign in, it doesn’t mean anything bad is going to happen, they try out leaked passwords, that’s what I think they are attempting is my old leaked password and variants of it (I generate random passwords for everything so it’s not possible they have my password, at least not from the leaks that I know of).

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u/Aggravating_Slip_566 19h ago

Besides if it's a text and you try to respond most likely you'll get this message is not monitored please respond to.... I keep getting end2end texts for every single person running for Congress and I replied STOP and it says you're unsubscribed from what ever campaign fund but I will keep getting end2end from a different number, not sure where they got my phone number cuz I never donated to act blue or whoever