Many people are receiving an email from Microsoft and BigPond that appear, on the surface, to be fake. Both these emails say very similar things and offer similar instructions on how best to update your security before the deadline of September 2024.
They tick all the boxes of a fake and scamming email but they, are 100% genuine.
Essentially Hotmail and Outlook, (owned by Microsoft) and Telstra email (run by Microsoft) are upgrading their security and need your Mac to update its secure connection to their servers.
The process is simple enough but can seem scary at first but if you are running a MacOS older than 10.14 this will not work. So, unless you update your MacOS or buy a new mac you’ll be limited to accessing your mail via a website after Sept 2024.
If you have a Hotmail account this will be using what is called IMAP. This means that all of your email is sitting on a server somewhere as well as on your Mac.
To update email security in Sonoma or Ventura you follow these steps.
- Ensure you have a full backup.
- Close the Apple Mail program.
- Click on the Apple Menu (top left hand corner of the screen) and choose System Settings.
- Locate and click on Internet Accounts.
- From the list locate your Hotmail account and click on it once.
- At the bottom of the list click on the Delete Account button.
- Confirm your choice.
- Then click on the Add Account button.
- From the list of options click on Add Other account…, then Mail account.
- Type in your email address and email password for the Hotmail account.
- Click on Sign in.
If you have an outlook.com or Telstra account this will be using IMAP. This means that all of your email is sitting on a server somewhere as well as on your Mac.
To update email security in Sonoma or Ventura you follow these steps.
- Ensure you have a full backup
- Close the Apple Mail program.
- Click on the Apple Menu (top left hand corner of the screen) and choose System Settings.
- Locate and click on Internet Accounts.
- From the list locate your account and click on it once.
- At the bottom of the list click on the Delete Account button.
- Confirm your choice.
- Then click on Add Account
- Then click on the Microsoft Exchange button.
- Type in your email address
- Click on Sign in.
- You’ll be asked for your password and you’ll need to confirm your choice to allow Exchange access your mac settings.
Once done you should be fully compliant with the new security settings.
Now if this all seems too much feel free to get in contact and we can arrange a service call to do this for you and roll in a health check at the same time.
