Received a survey emailed to random users from the XIV survey team

[MaikoRaines]

Exactly! I was about to drop in and talk about how awesome this was, but after reading this part: The scam siren is alarming. I'd be careful with that, @MaikoRaines.

If this doesn't sound your scam alarm bells, I don't know what would. Maybe an email from amazon that a package you did not except got confiscated by customs, and you now need follow the link in the email to clear this issue?

I had the same concerns at first, so full disclosure: I do scambaiting in my spare time and use a virtual machine to safely handle and analyze malicious content when working on campaigns (mostly research and reverse engineering).

I ran the email through a virtual instance and confirmed it’s legitimately owned by Square Enix. It passed all verification checks.

Edit: To be clear, it does not ask you for any login credentials etc. I think the survey is linked to your account's email. My Discord group report that some have received it and others haven't. Everyone who has received it is still subscribed to the game, too.

https://imgur.com/a/LgfrEVy

Interestingly, this same email address was brought up on the forums about 12 years ago, and it was confirmed back then that it belongs to SE—specifically their promotions department:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/65130

On top of that, several users on both the forums and Reddit have confirmed receiving game codes through that domain. I can confirm this myself as well:

https://imgur.com/a/bH780Bp