Always a scam email will try to land in your inbox. Although we do have spam filters, still we would need to find malicious emails through several ways as they are always alive. This article helps you to find malicious emails.
How to find malicious emails?
How do you know when you receive an email whether it is a scam or not? This web page provides simple tips to find malicious emails and how to stop scam emails.
find malicious email
Don’t believe “Dear Customer” emails
Spammers are always thinking about your data, the target, there’s an ancient technology in the applications called mail merge. This feature creates an outline /template that automatically uses a customer list to fill in names. Especially the last four digits of a credit card or bank account number, and other personal information.
That means when I receive an email from my bank, I expect it to say “Dear Saran” or “Dear Saravanakumar,” but certainly not “Dear Customer” or “Dear,” or, worse, no salutation whatsoever it is.
If you see an email which is addressed to “Dear customer” that will surely ask you to follow a link to fill in your account details, where chance for a scam. It is not meant that you should trust anyone or any email exactly addressed to you. Just keep in your mind that if you receive an email from a bank / your company they will always address your name.
Also Read: How to Protect Your Computer from Malware?
Dangerous link
If you are unsure about an email which you received, just hover / float your mouse cursor over any links you see in the body of the message. Make sure that you should not click the link. Now, look at the lower left corner of your browser or your email client. You will see the exact address of the link you’re hovering over.
Read the exact address carefully, this is where things start to get critical. Read out that link very, very cautiously to find malicious emails. If you are not paying your attention then you will be in trouble in regards to your data.
You should always trust your own reason ahead of link scanners and other security software to ensure your safety. In my tests, several security suites that scanned the full version of our example URL returned a clean bill of health for the site, even though to human eyes this is clearly not an Apple website.
Email has an attachment
Spammers not only use the links to acquire your data, they will try to trick you into downloading a file packed with malware / virus. For an instance, an email from 123XXXXXXXX.com landed in your inbox with an invoice attachment asking for final payment on an overdue item.
This email plays on the sudden emotional fear at thinking you may have an unpaid item with a service you use. Without thinking twice, you may start downloading that email attachment just to ensure the company didn’t make a mistake.
Here you need to stop and think again and again. Another solid rule of thumb is to NEVER download an attachment which you are not expecting. Just do not think who it’s from.
I hope this article will help to find malicious emails.