Receiving an email is the most normal thing, be it from work, from friends, from activities related to our day-to-day life, and from scams. It is on the latter where we are going to focus to teach you how to detect a scam email and not to fall into the traps that can leave your bank account in negative.
Throughout the years of history and experience that the El Grupo Informático website has, there have been numerous times that we have talked about scam emails, also known as ” phishing “.
How to detect hoaxes circulating on WhatsApp
In all these articles we have given some keys to detect dangerous emails and how to act in case of falling for scams. But now we are going to collect all the tips in a single article so that you can consult it whenever necessary.
Account and email subject
They are 2 key elements to detect if it is a fake or real email. The techniques are already highly specialized and cybercriminals already know how to attract attention without raising suspicions, which is why it is so difficult to detect a scam email.
The email address gives us a clear and direct clue as to whether it is a real email, that is, a real corporate account, or a fictitious one and we are dealing with a scam and identity theft.
With regard to the subject of the email, it seeks to create interest based on alarmist phrases with the sole purpose that the email is opened.
Throughout this article you are going to see several examples of phishing emails, and we are going to keep the subject and address visible so you can see them.
Graphic elements of a scam email
- Images: these types of false and dangerous emails that supplant the identity of other companies, often have logos, icons, banners and other very blurry and pixelated images.
Greetings and goodbyes in phishing emails
If a company really wants to inform you of something like a change in the Privacy Policy, report hacking of accounts, an unusual password change, etc. addresses you by your real name or username and not in a generalized way as “Dear customer”, “user number x”, “Hello”, etc. or directly there is an absolute absence of the greeting and the farewell.
Spelling, grammar and translation of scam emails
The vast majority of emails of this style tend to be poor translations , meaningless in some paragraphs and where there is always some misspelling and grammar.
It is advisable to read them carefully to detect these failures , since when we receive a phishing email from, for example, our bank saying that our account is inactive due to a security breach, the only thing we think about is to fix it as soon as possible, not to see if there are spelling mistakes or if it is a bad translation.
Another very clear test is the type of font used in the mail, as well as the change of font, both in size and spacing, as in the font itself.
Countdown wake-up call
Something very typical of phishing emails are the calls for attention, since the only objective of these emails is to collect private data and banking information , hence they encourage you to click on the links with the fear of losing the account in 24 hours , or closing the bank account, or not being able to reactivate or recover it, etc.
Links
We come to the jewel in the crown of phishing emails and this is where the real danger lies . There are dozens of ways to place the link (s) to get the recipient to bite into the scam and enter the link.
Within the links many dark secrets are hidden, from software that are downloaded silently and are capable of stealing all the information from the mobile or the PC, to the impersonation of the website of a bank that asks you for your private data and passwords to access to online banking, through gift coupons, free mobile phones , televisions , free samples, coffee makers, being a brand ambassador, etc.
Most scam emails carry more than one suspicious link , but leaving aside the number of dangerous links, the really important thing is whether they are camouflaged or not.
In the upper screenshots we see that the link is camouflaged under the text “I’m going to synchronize now!”, “Customer area”, “Click here”, “Look at this”, but sometimes, the link is visible, although shortened and neither the trap is shown.
If you decide to click on the link, you have to look at the browser box and there you will see if this email really comes directly from the company, or is it a real hoax:
- Check if there are words like “Store”, “Spain”, “Official”, etc. or numbers that have nothing to do with the name of the company.
- Check for underscores or dashes.
- Pay attention to uppercase and lowercase letters since there is a very widespread strategy that uses the uppercase “i” instead of the lowercase “l”, also the “o” and the changes with the zero and the uppercase O.
- Check that there are no strange characters like: $, ~, &, ¬,%, etc.
- Open another browser tab and look for the official website of the company from which you received the email. Compare the addresses until you find out if it is a case of phishing or not.
If it is a bank phishing and they tell you to activate your account, change the password, update personal data, etc. Enter using the application or directly from the browser and avoid using the links.
What should be done if it is a scam email?
Once you have everything reviewed, point by point, as we have shown in this article, and you are clear that it is a scam email, take screenshots and go to the official social networks of the brand and communicate what happened .
They will probably ask you to forward the email so that they can check everything you tell and see with their own eyes the scope of the scam and thus be able to warn the population to avoid greater evils.
Then delete the email from your inbox and do not continue forwarding it , or reply, or share the link, or anything similar.
In this way you will prevent more people from falling into the trap and can be involved in a pretty ugly mess for believing that it was the 1 million user, for following the steps to get a free mobile, for wanting to win a trip at 0 euros, or relying on an email telling you that your account was “disabled”, just like that.
The best advice that has always been given for the Internet is distrust . Distrust and verify, the two key steps to detect whether an email is a scam or not.
All the points to take into account to detect a scam email have been clear . It is very simple, but it is good to keep your eyes wide open. Little by little experience is gained and it is becoming easier to detect this type of fraudulent emails, even if cybercriminals change their techniques and want to avoid being discovered.
