Your inbox is full of lies, and this one is a favourite: the fake “login details reminder” from a site you’ve never heard of, acting like it’s doing you a favour while trying to shaft you. It’s dressed up as a friendly nudge about your account, but the only “account activity” it cares about is you clicking the bloody link.
It usually goes something like this: “Hi there, this is a reminder of your login details for [RandomService247]. For security reasons we cannot show your password, so please click here to view or reset your details.” Looks reasonable at a glance, especially when you’re half awake, scrolling on your phone, pretending to work. But you never created an account with RandomService247, and they know that. The whole trick is to sound routine and dull enough that your brain goes “oh yeah, that must be something I signed up for months ago.”
There are a few classic tells. The service name is generic nonsense. The from address doesn’t match the supposed brand in any sensible way. The message leans on “security”, “verification”, “last reminder”, or “your account may be disabled” to push you into clicking. And of course, the big shiny button or link is where all the damage happens – usually dumping you onto a fake login page that will happily collect whatever you type, or quietly tagging your email as active so they can spam you even harder.
The fix is brutally simple. If you don’t recognise the site, treat it as garbage and bin it. Don’t click the link, don’t tap the button, don’t even trust the unsubscribe line if the whole email smells off. Mark it as spam or phishing so your mail provider learns to shovel that crap straight into the bin next time. If it pretends to be from a brand you actually use, ignore the email and go to the site or app yourself, manually, and check there.
The boring truth is this – the less you click inside random emails, the safer you are. A password manager won’t autofill on a fake domain, which is a nice little early warning system. Multi-factor authentication means even if some chancer does grab a password, they still hit a wall. Spammers rely on you being tired, rushed, and on autopilot. Once you’ve seen this particular trick for what it is, it stops being clever and starts looking exactly like what it is – lazy muppetry trying to nick your details.