How to avoid email scams

Phishing is a type of cyber attack that targets individuals through email, text, phone calls and other forms of communication. They have the potential to be financially devastating for victims. Today, we’ll focus on email phishing and what to be aware of to ensure you can identify and avoid them.

Learning to spot a phishing email

Here are some hallmarks of a phishing email:

Urgent call to action or threat

Be suspicious of any email that is asking you to respond immediately. Creating a fabricated sense of urgency is unfortunately an effective way of getting people to open and act on phishing emails. It’s effective because some people may act before seeking out expert advice.

Poor spelling and grammar

It’s unlikely that Apple will send you an email informing you that you’ve won a free iPhone. It’s even more unlikely that Apple will send you an email informing you that you’ve won a free iFone. Legitimate organisations usually have competent editorial and content staff that mitigate against sloppy errors.

However, typos and poor grammar can be more sinister than poor translation. Phishing emails that contain errors may do so deliberately to evade filters that try to block attacks.

Generic greetings

Dear Madam. Never a convincing start to an email. Organisations that you’re connected to will almost certainly have your name in their database, and it’s unusual to be addressed by a generic name in 2024 via a legitimate email. Again, there are exceptions to this, but it’s part of a picture you can put together when identifying malicious emails.

Mismatched email domains

If you’ve noticed an email land in your inbox that’s claiming to be from Apple but using a gmail.com email, then you know it’s likely to lack legitimacy. It’s not always clear and obvious, however. You often see scammers making a small change in an otherwise legitimate email address. For example, santender.co.uk instead of santander.co.uk.

Questionable links or unexpected attachments

If you have any doubts about the legitimacy of a link in an email, hover your mouse over the link without clicking on it. Look at the address that pops up when you’re hovering and notice whether it matches the address that was typed in the message. For example, you could have a link that reads https://moneysavingtips.com/pensions but when you hover over the link it reads https://286382/moneytips/index.htm. Therefore this link should be avoided.

Ensure your security is updated

Firewall. Antivirus. You may have heard of both of these terms, but what are they and how are they different?

A firewall acts as a barrier to block unauthorised access to and from a network or system, while antivirus software detects and removes malicious software (malware) on a device. Both are essential for comprehensive security, as they address different threats and vulnerabilities.

Confused? Unless you’re a techy, the differences are quite subtle.

Firewall is active in both hardware - the physical parts of a device, such as the keys on a laptop - and the software. Software is the programs that run on your device, such as your web browser.

If you’d like to dive deeper into how to ensure your firewall and antivirus are effective, there are many guides online from reputable sources such as Norton and Cisco.

Reporting phishing emails

It’s really helpful for yourself and others to report phishing emails. You can either ‘report phishing’ directly to your email provider, such as Google, or you can forward the email to report@phishing.co.uk.