Scam Busters: Your Mailbox is Not Full!

Every once in a while, an individual may receive an email that looks legitimate, saying that their inbox is full. More often than not, this isn’t true. It’s often an attempted phishing attack, where a user visits a bogus website, enters their credentials, and then hackers have access to the user’s email account.

As many businesses use Outlook (and more and more are using Office 365), here’s how you can check the size of your mailbox in both Outlook and Outlook 365 Web Access.

Checking Mailbox Storage Usage in Outlook/Outlook 365

Checking Mailbox Storage Usage in Outlook:

1. In the lower-left corner of Outlook, where you see Items: ###, right-click.
2. In the Customize Status Bar menu, left-click Quota Information to turn it on.
3. You will now see how much free space is available in your mailbox in the lower-left corner of Outlook.

Checking Mailbox Storage Usage in Outlook 365 Web Access:

1. Click on the Settings sprocket in the upper-right corner.
2. Under Your app settings, click Mail.
3. On the left-hand Options pane, click General.
4. Click on My account. Your Mailbox usage in the lower right corner will tell you how much space is used, as well as what the maximum available space is.

Here are some red flags that an email could be a phishing attempt:

• If you hover your mouse over a hyperlink, a title bar will usually pop up. This will tell you what website you will be redirected to. Phishing sites can go to sites altogether different from the original website URL, or to a site that looks similar to the actual URL.
• Watch out for poor grammar (e.g. inconsistent capitalization, spaces before punctuation, inconsistent verb tenses). If an email provider were to actually send out a message, it would look professional.
• Watch out for misspellings (e.g. “loosing” has a different meaning than “losing”). Actual messages would most often be checked for misspellings.
• Look at the domain name of the sender. If it comes from a domain name that doesn’t make sense, the message can likely be trashed.

If in doubt, check with an IT professional to confirm if it’s legitimate, and don’t take any actions requested in the email in the meantime.