AOL customers have been receiving an email that purports to be from the “AOL Verification Team,” the first sentence of which reads exactly as follows: “This E-mail been sent to you by the AOL Verification Team to inform you that your account will be deactivated within the next 24 hours due to several unsuccessful log in attempt on your account.”  The email then sends you to a link to click on in order to prevent this from happening.  This email message is a scam and if you click on the link you will download a keystroke logging malware program that will steal all of the personal information from your computer and make you a victim of identity theft.

TIPS

This email scam is extemely amateurish.  It is addressed to “Dear Customer” rather than the recipient’s name.  Although it purports to be from AOL Account Services, the email address from which it comes is a person’s name at earthlink.net.  It is certainly doubtful that AOL would use Earthlink for emails. In addition, the grammar is atrocious.  Finally, when AOL contacts you on official matters it uses what it calls AOL Certified Mail which comes in the form of a blue envelope in your inbox and will have an AOL seal on the border of the email.  Whenever in doubt about a message that asks you to click on a link, call who the sender purports to be and confirm whether or not it is a scam.  Finally, remember to keep your firewall and security software up to date.