Email can be a great way to communicate without worrying about accumulating paper or playing phone tag. However, if you opt to get your communication from businesses by email, you may wonder how you can make sure those emails are safe. It's true scammers use email as a way to try to fool you into giving them your personal information for nefarious purposes, but there are some questions you can ask to help you determine whether an email is legitimate.
Any email you get should seem relevant and accurate. For example, if you get an email that there's an issue with your Apple account but you don't have an Apple account, this is a red flag. Another common one is an email saying there was an issue with a package delivery to you. If you haven't ordered any packages, this is likely a scam.
Organizations like the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and most financial institutions won't ever email you asking for personal information or your login credentials.
While it's certainly possible for a legitimate email to have a typo, lots of spelling and grammar errors, weird fonts or words that contain foreign characters are all red flags. This is often a sign that the email originated outside the United States and isn't a legitimate communication.
If you're not sure if an email is legitimate, always check the email address it was sent from. It should be something relevant like "help" or "support" followed by "@" and then the name of the company in most cases. Random strings of letters, numbers and characters in the email address are a giveaway that the email is likely a scam.
However, it's possible for scammers to spoof a legitimate company email address, which means it looks like it came from the correct email at first glance. But if you hit the reply button and check the email address that the reply would be sent to, you'll usually see the real one. If this doesn't match what showed in the original email, it's a fake.
Scammers do their best to make emails look like they came from the legitimate company, but small things might be different, such as the phone number or address in the contact information. Go to the website for the company and see if this information matches. Other signs that an email isn't real are a different logo or blurry images.
Chances are you'll get a fake email at some point. If your answers to the above questions make you believe an email isn't legitimate, here's what you should do.
You probably already opened the email to check if it was real or fake, and that's probably okay. Most of these emails aren't trying to infect your computer or steal your information just through opening the email. But if you have questions about whether an email is legitimate, don't reply to or it or open any attachments, like files or pictures. These can have viruses in them that are then able to get your information from your computer, and replying to the email with your login or identifying information is exactly what the scammer is hoping for. You also shouldn't click on any links inside the email.
If you're not sure if an email is real, the best thing to do is call the company directly to ask if they sent you anything. They'll be able to tell you if there's really an issue with your account or any additional information is needed. They can also usually positively identify that an email is a scam and let you know what your next steps should be. In some cases, the customer service representative may want you to forward the email to their fraud department so they can follow up.
Once you've identified that an email is fake, don't just delete it. Instead, there should be an option to mark the email as spam or phishing. Spam is when someone is emailing you without your permission — usually to sell you something or ask you to pass on a chain letter. Phishing is when an email is trying to get your personal information — most likely to help them commit identity theft or fraud. Once you mark the email as spam or phishing, it will automatically be deleted from your email account for you. If you have any questions about how to handle a suspicious email or what to do to make sure your personal information stays safe, the staff at Bethesda Gardens Phoenix can help.
