Email Scams are on the rise and getting more sophisticated / better at tricking you. Thanks, AI! This means you must be extra vigilant.
As I said in my previous post, I have recently been the victim of an identity scam — someone is sending out emails from fake Gmail accounts pretending to be me. Just to reiterate, I never ever send out emails soliciting business for site reviews or site audits or asking for money. Furthermore, any email you get from anyone offering site audits or reviews or SEO services are going to be phishing scams.
Please be extra extra wary of any email asking you for payment for anything or any logins, no matter how legit the email looks.
If you have any doubt at all, please forward the email to me and I can tell you if it is real.
All of this made me think that maybe I should go over some ways that I personally distinguish emails scams from legitimate emails.
Check the actual “From” email address
It is easy to make an email say it is coming from virtually anybody, so you need to look at the actual email address it is being sent from. In Gmail, if you open the email, it shows you the actual email address. In other programs you might need to mouse over or right click on the From field to see it.
If an email says it comes from Microsoft for example, the email address should end in Microsoft.com. Check for misspellings of the domain or letters replaced by numbers, or other words added to the domain (like nicrosoft.com or support-microsoft.com). If the email is coming from a big company, they will never send emails from a gmail or hotmail or aol email address.
I have previously used Gmail for a lot of emails, for various reasons, but am phasing it out so that all emails coming from me come from jenny@websydaisy.com. Again, if in doubt, forward the email to me at jenny@websydaisy.com.
But still don’t trust that “From” email address
Bad actors can “spoof” the email address — have it look like it is coming from an email address that it is not. With all of the modern safeguards in place, emails using a spoofed “from” email address are usually blocked. But not always. The easiest way to tell if the email address has been spoofed is to click “Reply” like you are going to reply to the email, and then see what email address it fills in the “To:” field. If the “From” email address was spoofed, the “To” email on your reply will be a different email address.
Check the Content / Curse AI
If the content contains misspellings, poor grammar, or looks unprofessional, it is probably a scam. But some scam emails look entirely legit! The rise of AI and ChaptGPT mean that anyone who speaks any language can write a very convincing and professional sounding and looking email in English. It might look like it is coming from your hosting company or domain registrar. Do not click on any links in any email you are unsure of, do not call any phone numbers listed in the email, and do not reply to the email.
Open a new browser window and go to the official website for that company to login to your account or call the phone number on their website to see if you have any services expiring or any warning messages. Again, do not click on any links or call any phone numbers found in the email itself.
Beware any email with messages of false urgency about accounts being suspended, or legal action being taken against you, or even limited offers for free services. They are counting on you to panic and rush before vetting the email for its authenticity.
If you get an email that looks like it comes from someone you know, but the email itself seems off in any way, send that person a separate new (not reply) email to the email address you usually use for that person to verify. I only found out this was happening because a client who received one of the scam emails impersonating me felt something off about the message, and emailed me at my usual email address to ask about it.
Be Wary of Attachments
If you get an email you were not expecting and it has files attached, do not click on the attachments! They can contain malware that will infect your computer.
Block and Report
Once you have verified that an email is a scam, block that sender and if possible, report the email as phishing. How to do this varies depending on the email program you are using, but it is worth it to spend a minute learning how to do this in yours.
Always Be Verifying
Email scammers steal billions (with a “B”!) of dollars from US consumers every year. They get better and better at finding ways to trick us, but you can avoid being scammed by just taking a few extra minutes to verify the sender is who they say they are.
