10 Ways to Spot a Phishing Email

Cyber crime is continuing to dominate the world of business. Attackers are constantly finding new ways to try to compromise the cyber security a business has, or more worringly, doesn’t have. 

Phishing emails and hacked email accounts are becoming incresingly common, especially those which have bank details, due to trying intercept payments. 

The attacks are becoming even more credible with the intelligence of attacks and are incresasingly sophisticated. From existing suppliers ‘requesting to’ change bank details on a PDF sent by a genuine contact, to a CEO of a charity fradulantly emailing their own staff memembers requesting to change their PAYE details.

The most important factors you can have with these attacks and the most critical means of prevention is user training, understanding and business security.

To help you out, we have put together 10 top tips to help you identify suspicious emails:

1. Do not trust the display name

Many phishing emails will look genuine or come from a name you recognise. But always make sure to check the email address by hovering over the display name or right clicking and clicking on properties.

2. Read the email but do not click

By hovering over a link in an email it will tell you where that link goes (do not click). You can also copy the hyper link and paste it into a document to view the full link. If the link looks strange then do not click it. 

3. Check spelling and grammar

Phising emails tend to have spelling or grammar errors that you would not normally find. The email can also contain odd spacing between characters/words.

4. How is the email addressed?

If you do recieve a phising email, you will normally find that it is much less personal. Instead of using your name it may say “Dear Trusted Customer”.

5. Are your personal details being requested?

A legitimate company is highly unlikely to request personal information via an email. Banks and financial institutions, in particular, will never request such details over email.

6. Beware of time pressures

Phishing emails tend to sound very urgent, putting pressure on you to act fast before something drastic happens. It is very rarely a legitimate compant would make contact with you via email with such short deadline.

The urgency is used from attackers to force you into taking action through the pressure the put on you via the email.

7. Check the signature

Most legitimate emails will include a signature at the bottom of the email along with a legal disclaimer. Fraudulent emails may have no signature block or one that does not match the company style.

8. Do not open attachments

Phishing emails will mainly come with an attachment which will sound very important, but often contain viruses. Whatever you do, do not open the document. If you have, you should contact your IT team straight away.

9. Do not believe everything you see

Sometimes the email itself will be to good to be true. Attackers use very clever tactics to encourage you to provide personal or payment information as you have won a competition. 

10. When in doubt contact your administrator

If an email raises concerns of any of the above it is always best to contact your administrator/IT department to check rather than put the organisation at risk.

These tips are not going to gurentee any attack from happening, they are here to help with your knowledge on what to do if you recieve an email which you suspect as harmful.