Fraudsters have attacked customers of the oft-targeted Microsoft with a phishing scam offering a £500,000 ($A739,000) financial reward.
The scammers, masquerading as representatives of "Microsoft Office", offered the "financial aid award" to email recipients while requesting their personal information.
The email purported to originate from an "LGHealth Email Service" in association with Microsoft.
It mimicked the nature of legitimate email communication with a "confidentiality notice" urging victims to contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message if not the intended recipient.
The scam is the latest in a series of phishing operations targeting Microsoft users.
Last year, Australian users were targeted by a cold-calling syndicate offering to fix falsely diagnosed security problems at a cost of $400 and users’ credit card information.
Indian-based Microsoft Gold status partner Comantra was blamed for the phone scam and subsequently dumped by Microsoft.
