How to Spot Email Scams and Phishing Attacks

Can you imagine modern life without email? Whether you access your emails on a personal computer, smartphone, or tablet, email helps you stay connected with friends and family, and receive transactional messages from trusted brands. Unfortunately, the email inbox is also increasingly targeted by scammers who seek to employ sophisticated strategies to steal your cash or valuable personal information. 

According to ABC News, American consumers lost over $52 million due to phishing scams in 2022. Worryingly, the report highlights how elderly consumers are at the most significant risk of fake email campaigns.

When something is as important to you as your email, it pays dividends to be vigilant and guard your personal information and devices from potential fraudsters. In this article, we'll share some scam alerts and demonstrate how you can prevent yourself from becoming a victim.

Key Insights 

• Email scammers will work hard to persuade you that their emails are from a trustworthy source.
• Fake email campaigns can look very convincing but often contain telltale signs that positively identify them as scams.
• Never feel pressured to respond to an email or click on a link without first checking that it comes from a genuine source.

How to Spot Email Scams

Email scammers have developed many tactics designed to fool recipients into falling for their scams. These tricks typically involve spoofing their victims by sending emails that appear to come from familiar and trusted sources. However, there are several telltale signs email users can look out for that will identify potential scams. 

Our customer reviews highlight several warning signs that indicate your emails are potentially fraudulent:

• Email scammers use email addresses created to spoof legitimate brands (e.g., support@paypa1.com instead of support@paypal.com). 
• Scam emails link to suspicious-looking variations of legitimate website addresses (e.g., e-Bay.com instead of eBay.com). 
• Phishing emails are often littered with spelling mistakes, poor grammar, and unprofessional language.
• A legitimate company will never ask for sensitive information such as your account login details, passwords, or social security numbers.
• Real email marketing campaigns do not contain attachments.
• Genuine marketing departments take the time to personalize their email communications. Generic greetings, like "Dear Customer," could indicate a scam email. 
• Scammers use urgent or threatening language to frighten recipients into acting quickly or risk further consequences. 
• If an email lands in your inbox offering you tickets for a sold-out Taylor Swift or Oasis concert, access to cut-price designer brands, or an unbelievable investment opportunity, you're almost certainly being scammed. 

Common Types of Email Scams

While email scammers deploy ever more sophisticated types of email scams, the most common phishing examples we see include the following:

Imposter scams

An imposter scam is a fake letter posing as an official email from a recognizable company. Scammers will use these phishing email scams to persuade you to share your personal information with them. This information may include login details, passwords, or other sensitive information. 

A Netflix review #6183281 highlights how they were targeted by an imposter scam, and sent what looked like a legitimate email. The fake email suggested that their service would be canceled due to non-payment. Knowing something wasn't right, the customer “called the Netflix 800 number who confirmed phishing scam.” The Netflix agent then requested a screenshot of the scam email and confirmed the account was in good standing. 

Tech support scams

Tech support scam emails will claim to come from well-known technology brands such as Microsoft or Apple. The scam typically suggests you have a problem with your computer’s operating system. It will then ask you to click on a link that falsely claims will enable you to resolve the issue. In reality, this allows scammers to access personal files or install malware on your machine, as illustrated by this recent Reddit post. 

Source: reddit.com

An IT engineer replying to the thread suggested:

I would only need seconds to take whatever I need or plant whatever I want without the person knowing once I gained access.

His advice was to fully reformat the PC and “reset all passwords for everything.”

Unusual activity emails

These emails suggest that a trusted brand has noticed unusual activity in your account and urges urgent action to resolve the situation. This recent thread on X highlights how vigilant email users must be to avoid falling foul of these scams. 

Source: x.com

I got this email and I clicked the link. Didn’t think anything of it, it looked legit. 

But after clicking the link, the user quickly discovered the email was far from "legit".

Panic set in when the user checked the email address and discovered it was a spoof. The user quickly realized the threat was very real when he discovered scammers had accessed his computer.

I think it scanned my computer and found my seed phrases in my OneDrive after it had me log into my Microsoft account and it was able to recover my wallet and drain everything in it. I watched my entire life disappear before my eyes.

Fake invoice scams

Fake invoice scams demand unwarranted payments or encourage users to open attachments posing as invoices that can infect systems with malware. These email scams will often attempt to intimidate users into making immediate payments by threatening further action if they are not resolved quickly.

A recent review #5928145 on PissedConsumer recommended that consumers who receive unwarranted demands from collection agencies go directly to the company the agency claims to collect debts on behalf of.

they send you fake invoices saying that you owe money to paypal when you don't and we even checked with paypal and owe nothing…

Survey scams

Beware of any email messages offering high-value prizes and other incentives for completing surveys. Scammers often use this approach to illicitly collect highly personal information under the guise of performing market research or soliciting online reviews.

This is an easy scam to fall for because many legitimate companies will offer incentives like Amazon gift cards for customer feedback. However, as a general rule of thumb, if the approach is unsolicited or comes from an unknown source, it is best avoided. 

How to Avoid Email Scams

Key tips to avoid email scams include:

• Educate yourself to spot the warning signs as indicated in this article. 
• If you are unsure of an email campaign's legitimacy, do not click on any links and, if necessary, contact the customer service team via a trusted route.
• Remember, trustworthy companies will never ask you to share any personal information with them by email.
• Keeping your anti-virus software up-to-date will help you identify and block new email threats.
• Reporting suspicious activities, such as spam or phishing emails, helps your email service provider identify and block potential email scams.

Do not Fall to Email Fraud

By following the tips in this article, you’ll help reduce the threat of falling foul of email scams and phishing campaigns. However, if you've already encountered a phishing email or want to share your insights and email security tips to help others stay safe, you can write a review on our online reviews platform. Your experience could help prevent others from being scammed.