How to recognize an email scam?
How many emails do you receive daily? A recent study proves that an average office worker gets about 126 emails per day. Who has time to read them all carefully? In a fraction of a second, you decide what to do with an incoming message: delete, scam through, keep for later or reply ASAP.
Unfortunately, your shortage of time plays into the hands of fraudsters. These days it is quite easy for them to collect necessary information online to address you with a credible request.
So, how to (quickly) recognize an email scam? The rule of thumb is: if you are asked to make a payment or to share your or someone else’s personal details, it is a red flag.
Scammers will try to cunningly disguise themselves in order to steal your money or identity. They may try to impersonate your bank, internet service provider, a well-known company (such as Google or Apple), a governmental body, an executive in your company, a friend of yours, and so on.
If you receive an unusual email, look at a few parameters first.
- Are you addressed in a generic way (“Dear sir”) rather than by a name? It is unlikely that any sender that you previously dealt with would do so.
- What do the sender’s email address and name look like? If you see an unrelated domain in their email, misspellings, an irrelevant name, consider it a sign of a scam.
You can often check these elements without even opening an email. At this stage, you can contact the alleged sender independently (by finding their contacts online or in a corporate directory) and verify if they really sent you an email.
Importantly, if you’ve opened a suspicious email, in most cases it won’t harm your device, but it can provide some of your details to the sender. Still, I recommend never clicking on the links or attachments in a questionable email, as this can infect your device with a virus or other malware.
Various scam requests have similar characteristics. Examples include being:
- Offered something that is too good to be true, e.g. a big lottery prize, an unexpected heritage, a cure-all medicine, or a perfect investment opportunity
- Threatened or convinced that you are in trouble
In both cases, the scammers will likely prompt you to act fast or you will either lose your jackpot or face dreadful consequences. Keep calm. No legitimate organization or public authority would rush you to make payments or make important decisions. Sometimes scams feature fake threats, so there’s no need to freak out right away.
Whenever you receive suspicious offers, google their elements: email addresses, exact message texts, phone numbers, or company names. You may find out that others have already faced such requests, and they appeared to be scams.
Did you ever face a really elaborate scam? Be sure to share it in a comment!
