Detecting fake emails and phishing
Fake emails
View the header info. Pay attention to the email address of a sender. It may imitate a legitimate sender. With only few characters altered or omitted, cybercriminals will often use an email address that closely resembles one from a reputable source.
Look closely at the content:
Hover your cursor over any links in the body of an email. Links not matching the text that appears raise a red flag. So does the use of URL shortening services. Email clients can be viewed in simple text instead of html, so one never forgets to do this.
Poor grammar and sentence structure, misspellings, and inconsistent formatting can be other indicators of a possible phishing attempt.
An unsolicited email requesting a user download and open an attachment is a common delivery mechanism for malware, even when it seems to come from a friend, or an employeur.
A false sense of urgency or importance to help persuade a user to download or open an attachment without examining it first, completes this picture. Do not.
Verify message source.
Check the reply email.
Reply and wait for the result.
Phishing
Be wary of emails asking for confidential information.
Don’t get pressured into providing sensitive information. Phishers like to use all kinds of social engineering. Learn what you can about it.
Check a website’s privacy policy, especially whether it will or will not sell its mailing list. If so, do not register.
Watch out for generic-looking requests for information.
Never submit confidential information via forms embedded within email messages.
Never use links in an email to connect to a website unless you are absolutely sure they are authentic.