Is this scam? Complete a purchase by May 11, 2025 to keep your account active (SOLVED)

M$ Gorilla Sales Tactics, absolute bastards, stop pulling these stunts and go fix all the damage you have caused to W11... NOW!

I got this email as well.

The best clue is that it is because of signing up to Teams during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I think I had two sign-ins one personal and one for Open Source contributions (both free accounts of course).

I signed into teams and it gave me some sort of option about what I wanted to use - unfortunately I didn't read it, so don't know what it said. Probably it gave me the option as to which account to use. Anyway, I logged in with my personal one and while this login is progressing, the address bar briefly shows "?tenantid=xxyy etc". This is not actually the one in the email. There doesn't seem to be a way to display the tenantid once logged in (the method in the Microsoft help 'click on three dots and select Copy Link to Channel' doesn't work).

Then I tried logging into Microsoft Azure. This time I used my OS username. This logged into an Azure account, and on looking at directories and subscriptions, it says my current directory is a friend who has added me to a COVID-19 Teams. Below that is the Directory Name for my OS user, with an option to switch, AND THIS HAS THE DIRECTORY ID from the email.

But if I try to switch to the directory from the email, it says Error Code: AADSTS5000225 this tenant has been blocked due to inactivity.

BUT THIS HAS BEEN BLOCKED WHEN THE EMAIL SAYS I HAVE TILL AUGUST 8, 2025 TO KEEP THE ACCOUNT ACTIVE.

Some of us have done 'a little research' and have never knowingly had an Azure account. I don't have an organization, work, or school account (I retired in 2010, the same year Azure became publicly available), and have never had one, nor have I knowingly signed up to a business service, so it's still a mystery why I received the email. It's only natural to worry that one's account may have been compromised...

When I was unable to access the Azure portal, I went onto the Azure support platform to ask about this email and was unable to access it without logging in to the Azure platform. Microsoft Learn support & moderators were unable to explain why it was sent to me and so many others who knew nothing about Azure, Entra, or tenant IDs.

I found a blog article, 'Microsoft Phising with MS-365 Tenants', by Günter Born, a Microsoft MVP and Microsoft Answers community moderator, in which he investigates this email and cannot reach a conclusion, suggesting "Microsoft had either been hacked – or that they've totally lost control of their cloud stuff."

You may consider these forum responses "pretty funny", but, given the circumstances, I think many of us were justified in having concerns that our accounts might have been compromised.

Some of these responses were pretty funny. People should do a little research before popping off like a lunatic. This is a legitimate email and Microsoft isn't trying to scam you. Though I do agree my first impression was a phishing attempt by a bad actor. MS should rework the tone of the email.

If anyone gets this email from Microsoft, it is because they were an administrator of an Azure account, most likely from an old corporate account. Azure is their cloud-based account management tool.

You can check your account by going to https://portal.azure.com/ and logging in with the Microsoft account associated with the email to which you received the notice. Or if you don't trust any links, just search for Microsoft Azure and follow the link to log in. Once I logged in, I could see that my MS account was tied to my old company's unused Azure account. You can clearly see the tenant ID when you hover over your name in the top right corner.

Within the Azure dashboard you can see an option to manage your Microsoft Entra ID. Entra has something to do with authenticating users. In my case, I was an administrator of some software from my previous company. There was only one user - me. I left there two years ago. The company also folded for good over a year ago. Apparently, the subscription must have lapsed.

In my case, I am doing nothing as my previous company doesn't exist any longer and I have nothing to do with the Azure account tied to my Microsoft account.

Hopefully you will be able to trace your own issues without having to sit on a call with Microsoft support.

Thanks for providing one of the few informative responses.

Regardless of the legitimacy of the content of the email, it is clear that it is causing widespread confusion and distress among Microsoft customers, in part because the prospect of access being denied to Microsoft products already bought and paid for could be so impactful for their customers.

In my case, I wasted well over an hour researching it, and I am more tech-savvy than most. I can only imagine if my parents were confronted with the same email how confusing they would find it and how problematic it would be for them to find much less understand the contents of forums such as this one.

If they value their customers' opinions of Microsoft and its products, management should really get ahead of this and send further messaging to those to whom they originally sent this email with detailed information to those who use (and pay for) Microsoft products but would be unable to make heads or tails of this email.

Extrapolating by the level of activity and concern expressed in this and other forums (such as Reddit) I would imagine that may be a substantial portion of the total population of people who received the email.