Scammers love to send confusing but often convincing email messages to unsuspecting victims by posing as a legitimate software or service provider, or even as a supervisor, principal, etc.  They say things like ".. there's been unusual activity on your account .." or ".. click here to regain access .." or " .. verify your account or else it will be blocked/deactivated .." etc. Sometimes they pretend to be someone high up in the organization asking you for a favor involving purchase of a gift card.

You should always be wary of these kinds of emails. Here is an example of a Phishing email pretending to be from a service provider. Here's how you can spot a fake.

Most legitimate emails will not contain embedded links, so if you receive an email that sounds suspicious, you can always evaluate the validity of the email by first checking to see where the links take you. 

To do that, place your mouse over the link (without clicking) to expose the destination URL.

In the above example, if you mouse-over the Here link it shows the link going to a domain called “netlify.com” instead of a Microsoft domain as one would expect (since the email purports to be from Microsoft).

Another indicator that this is a Phishing email is that the sender’s domain of codale.com doesn’t match the link domain of netlify.com.

Moreover, no company will send an “unusual activity” email asking for you to sign in to your account. That's not typically the process companies follow.

Finally, the wording doesn’t make sense- it says “..to regain instant access OR your account will be blocked.” How can you "regain" access to something that isn’t blocked?

This Phishing email contains lots of red flags.  Your job is to learn how to spot them to avoid becoming a victim.

One more thing! Don't forget to click the Phish Alert V2 button in your Outlook email client for every Phishing message you receive in order to report the message.