Phishing is a dangerous form of cybercrime. It is practiced in many ways to trick businesses and steal their sensitive information. Deceptive messages, clicking bogus links, sending personal, or sensitive details online, and downloading malicious attachments are some of the common ways of email phishing. You can prevent phishing attacks with effective solutions. In this post, we discuss some common ways to prevent email phishing attacks.
Check for Email Send from a Public Domain
An important thing that you must note is that no organization will send you an email that ends with ‘gmail.com.’ This is one thing that even Google does not practice. Every company has its own company accounts and email domain, which are meant to be used by the employees for all kinds of professional and company related emails.
So, if you find an email that ends like an independent email, then the message is probably legitimate. Moreover, before you click on any message sent from a company’s email then do check online about the company before clicking on the link. This makes it easier to detect phishing.
Look at the Complete Email Address and Not Just the Company’s Name
Most of us don’t look at the email address from which a message has come from. Your inbox always displays the name and the subject line. So, before you jump straight to open the email, you must read the name and subject line.
When cyber attackers create bogus email addresses, they mostly select the display name, which is not related to the email address at all. Therefore, they use a bogus email address that will appear in your inbox with a display name Google. Hence, avoid opening such emails to prevent phishing.
Emails with Misspelled Domain Names
Another way a domain name can help you know about a phishing email is when it contains a misspelled domain name. The fact is that anyone can purchase a domain name and since every domain name must be unique, there are numerous ways to create addresses that differ from each other.
Hence, whenever you receive an email from an unknown domain then you must check its spelling. If you find anything suspicious then you must check for the same online and only then click on the link.
A Poorly Written Email
You can know if an email is a scam if it includes grammatical errors and unusual phrases. For example, you receive an email from a reputed company or brand but there are lots of errors in the email. This way, you can realize that the email has been most probably sent by a cyber-criminal.
Moreover, such scams are operated manually. So, if you send an email then the scammer would definitely respond. Hence, you have to be more alert.
Automated Attacks
Scammers don’t always monitor inboxes and send tailored responses. They just dump thousands of created messages on unsuspecting individuals. There is no requirement to filter out potential respondents. This, in turn, will reduce the probability of a successful attack. Also, it can alert the victim to the scam.
Since scammers are not very good at writing so when you receive an email that is poorly written and does not make sense then it is probably a scam. Also, most of the phishing attackers belong to non-English speaking countries and hence they have limited access to this language. Keeping an eye to it lets you spot easily the difference between a legitimate sender and a scam.
Identifying phishing attacks is not simple and these are only some of the ways that can help you avoid phishing to some extent. Most importantly, the best way to stay away from phishing attacks is to avoid clicking on any email that is doubtful or contains an unlawful or suspicious subject line.
