Phishing – How to Spot a Phishing eMail

A phishing email is an email that appears legitimate but is actually an attempt to get your personal information or steal your money. Here are some ways to recognize a phishing email:

• • • • Urgent call to action or threats – Be suspicious of emails that claim you must click, call, or open an attachment immediately. Often, they’ll claim you have to act now to claim a reward or avoid a penalty. Creating a false sense of urgency is a common trick of phishing attacks and scams. They do that so that you won’t think about it too much or consult with a trusted advisor who may warn you.

        Tip: Whenever you see a message calling for immediate action take a moment, pause, and look carefully at the message. Are you sure it’s real? SLOW DOWN AND BE SAFER.

      • First time or infrequent senders – While it’s not unusual to receive an email from someone for the first time, especially if they are outside your organization, this can be a sign of phishing. When you get an email from somebody you don’t recognize, or your email provider identifies as a new sender, take a moment to examine it extra carefully.
      • Spelling and bad grammar – Professional companies and organizations usually have an editorial staff to make sure customers get high-quality, professional content. If an email message has obvious spelling or grammatical errors, it might be a scam. These errors are sometimes the result of awkward translation from a foreign language, and sometimes they’re deliberate in an attempt to evade filters that try to block these attacks.
    • Generic greetings – An organization that works with you should know your name and these days it’s easy to personalize an email. If the email starts with a generic “Dear sir or madam” that’s a warning sign that it might not really be your bank or shopping site.
    • Mismatched email domains – If the email claims to be from a reputable company, like your bank, but the email is being sent from another email domain like Gmail.com, or microsoftsupport.ru it’s probably a scam. Also be watchful for very subtle misspellings of the legitimate domain name. Like micros0ft.com where the second “o” has been replaced by a 0, or rnicrosoft.com, where the “m” has been replaced by an “r” and a “n”. These are common tricks of scammers.
    • Suspicious links or unexpected attachments – If you suspect that an email message is a scam, don’t open any links or attachments that you see. Instead, hover your mouse over, but don’t click, the link to see if the address matches the link that was typed in the message. In the following example, resting the mouse over the link reveals the real web address in the box with the yellow background. Note that the string of numbers looks nothing like the company’s web address.

Cybercriminals can also tempt you to visit fake websites with other methods, such as text messages or phone calls. Sophisticated cybercriminals set up call centers to automatically dial or text numbers for potential targets. These messages will often include prompts to get you to enter a PIN number or some other type of personal information.

If you’re suspicious that you may have inadvertently fallen for a phishing attack, there are a few things you should do.

• • While it’s fresh in your mind write down as many details of the attack as you can recall. In particular try to note any information such as usernames, account numbers, or passwords you may have shared.
  • Immediately change the passwords on those affected accounts, and anywhere else that you might use the same password. While you’re changing passwords you should create unique passwords for each account.
  • Confirm that you have multifactor authentication (also known as two-step verification) turned on for every account you can.
  • If this attack affects your work or school accounts, you should notify the IT support folks at your work or school of the possible attack. If you shared information about your credit cards or bank accounts, you may want to contact those companies as well to alert them to possible fraud
  • If you’ve lost money, or been the victim of identity theft, report it to local law enforcement. The details in step 1 will be very helpful to them.