Your email Inbox can be a minefield at times with all the spam that we receive. To make things worse, the emails aren’t just spam anymore. Attackers target people with legitimate looking emails in an effort to try fool them to logging into a fake site. As soon as a person tries to log in, their credentials and accounts are compromised. The term for this whole process of trying to steal someone’s credentials is called Phishing, and unfortunately the practice is here to stay. What can you do to protect yourself? There are always some tell-tale signs that a legitimate looking email is nothing but garbage, and we’ll point out a couple in this article.
DISCLAIMER: Email addresses and weblinks of questionable origin are purposely being written in a way that they are not clickable by accident. If you are so curious as to visit or email any of these addresses, the results are squarely on your shoulders and you absolve iNOVENTiVE from any and all consequences.
Alison
The first example we’re going to review is a seemingly innocent message from Alison. Right away, the fact that the message has ended up in the Junk folder is a red flag.
The email itself looks reasonably legitimate, and it is always possible that it could have been flagged as junk by mistake, but there are additional clues.
If you touch Alison’s email address at the top, it will open up the contact so you can see the relevant information.
Alison’s email address is eggig1985 (at) wbmelvin.com. The address is a little weird, and not something immediately recognizable as an existing contact that has been previously communicated with. Just for kicks, going to the domain wbmelvin.com, turns out to be Walter B Melvin Architects in New York. Definitely not an existing contact, and another red flag. Like most spam and phishing emails, the email addresses is likely spoofed.
Next, you can touch and hold the View and More Information links to get a preview of where the button will take us. As you can see in the following screenshots, both links take us to http:// rcg5409 . dothome . co . kr / catastrophel . php
Based on the word “catastrophe” in the link, it’s a 100% safe bet that nothing good will happen from clicking it and you should delete it immediately.
Shoppers Drug Mart
Now, who hasn’t been to Shoppers Drug Mart to collect or spend points? Oh, you haven’t? Well, just pretend you have for now please.
Again, another seemingly legitimate email, this one arriving directly to the Inbox and not the Junk folder. It must be legit then, right?
We can check out the same things as we did in the last email as they all give genuine clues to the true legitimacy of an email.
As you can see, and probably guess, a legitimate email from Shoppers Drug Mart is definitely not going to be coming from cadypoop13 (at) gmail.com. We don’t have to bother going any further on this one to know it’s garbage.
Wrap-Up
This article is in no way a 100% sure fire guide on how to spot spam or phishing emails. It is only meant as a very brief starting point of where to look for clues to help determine whether or not the email is legitimate. If you check through the basic details, and are still unsure whether the email is real, have another set of eyes give it a once over. If the email appears to come from a person or business contact that you’re familiar with, contact them directly to see if they did in fact send that message. The very last thing you should do with an unfamiliar or suspicious email or web link is to click it.
If you have any questions, or would like additional information on this topic, please feel free to reach out to us.
