Verify Your Identity Notification

I guess this is where I need to post this.

I got an email today from our "mortgage" company, asking me to Verify My Identity or certain privileges would be suspended on our account.

Two things immediately caught my attention!

#1: It was worded as though it were a savings or checking account.

"Restricted accounts can continue to receive payments, but they are limited in their ability to transfer or withdraw funds."

This is our mortgage company!! We only pay into the account!

#2: It was sent to an email address our mortgage company doesn't have nor ever would have, on file!

I called the mortgage company and told them I thought this might be a scam. They confirmed they did not send, nor would they ever send a notification like that through email. They then gave me an email address to forward it to to report abuse.

So just out of curiosity, I went ahead and clicked on the VERIFY YOUR IDENTITY link, after moving it to the Spam folder and reporting it to Google as well, just to see where it linked up to, and here is where I am confused. It redirected me to a model airplane club of some sort! Foreign, not sure what language it was in, but it took me straight to the log in page for this organization.

I don't understand where the "scam" is. They are not asking for money and you can back out of registering easily. So why jeopardize your club and reputation, by hiding it behind this notification? What consequences are there really for this type of mining? What can really happen to them?

[AlanJones]

It is a phishing scam and the link should have taken you to a page that would try and phish your account details. Perhaps the scammer set it up wrongly or perhaps it had already been reported and removed.

The other possibility is that it could have downloaded malware to your computer, so it would be a good idea to give your machine a full scan with your anti-virus and something like Malwarebytes.

In future - do not click on unknown links in emails.