Email Scam, Phishing, Spoofing And How To Avoid Them

In this post, we will learn about email scam, phishing and spoofing and how to protect yourself from scammers.

Email scam: An email scam is a type of scam or a fraud scheme which is sent through email. For example, spammers sent email messages asking for bank account numbers or any other details of the recipients by telling them a false story like they will be transferring money in their account. Also, they try to lure the recipients by offering them rewards if the recipients agree to do some task assigned by the spammer.

Email Phishing: Email phishing is a technique used by the spammer in which he sends an email which looks exactly like the one which is sent by a reputed organization. User presumes that it is one of the several emails he receives from the organization. However, when he clicks on the link in the email he is taken to a phony website. If the user enters any sensitive information, then, the spammer will record this information. Email phishing can be avoided by looking at the email headers and the from email address of the sender. Also, when visiting a site, before authenticating a user should check the URL of the website.

Email Spoofing: Email spoofing is a technique used by a spammer to send an email to a recipient by masking the sender email address and sender name. Spammers used various techniques to impersonate a genuine sender. Email spoofing can be avoided by the recipients by checking the email message headers.

By checking the email message headers you can identify an email message if it is genuine or not. As a general rule of thumb, you should not click on the links in the email messages. You can open a website directly by typing in its URL. Also, you should not reply to email messages sent by people whom you don’t know personally.