If it's a scam, it's a damn clever one, because a whois query reveals a domain registered to Microsoft, with azure-dns name servers and a Microsoft contact email.
Also one that's, erm, been flying under the radar for a long time because I've been getting these things for years. Not sure about parent but this is pretty well-known by people who've had to deal with it.
Been looking for ten minutes now and I can't find how to differentiate between Azure customers and Microsoft official websites. Observations:
- the advertising domain is not bought by markmonitor whereas microsoft.com, office.com, and outlook.com all are. Maybe this advertising domain isn't an important enough brand or maybe some other reason. The DNS servers for all four domains are NS1-{0..99}.azure-dns.com, NS2-{0..99}.azure-dns.net, and two other TLDs for NS3 and NS4, and always in the same order
- IP space is all AS8068 and AS8075 (checking the same four domains)
- I tried duckduckgo for "how to differentiate between azure customers and microsoft ip space" but didn't find anyone asking that question anywhere. Probably bad phrasing on my part
- I tried looking for websites hosted by Azure to see if there is an IP space for customers by searching ddg for "powered by azure" and "hosted with azure" but I only get results from Microsoft themselves, random garbage, and things like "azure lessons" that aren't hosted with azure at all (heh)
I would also have expected this to be not-Microsoft-owned and a scam, but I'm failing to prove that hypothesis. That would mean Microsoft is not the company that I thought it was: I thought the difference between Facebook,Google and Microsoft,Apple is that some are in the business of manipulating people and others sell honest products (even if I have other issues with locked-down Apple devices, at least it's not adtech). Looking for revenue streams, I found <https://www.kamilfranek.com/assets/images/microsoft_revenue_...>. So not quite adtech but ads was the biggest growing product last year and has been growing for at least a decade (also based on other sources). Interesting.
It does sound like a scam, but if you've ever tried to use a Microsoft account (I have to sometimes for work) you'll eventually land on a pile of domains that look like scams, and bizarrely want you to type in your password in a UI from the 90s among other things.
(as an aside, I like UIs from the 90s but it's jarring when you fall out of the regular glossy experience into like totallylegitimatemicrosoftazure.com or whatever)
