Identifying Spam Emails

Identifying Spam Emails

Entrepreneurs, freelancers, small business owners and employees of any company must all remain wary of phishing emails.

Such mail is sent to personal and professional accounts in the hopes of getting the recipient to click on a link, which may cause a virus to spread to a specific workstation or the entire network.

Below are some ways to identify spam emails so you don’t accidentally interact with one in the future.

Know the Sender?

One of the primary red flags for a phishing email is when you do not know the person/company who is sending the email. If the person or company’s name is one that is unfamiliar to you, treat anything said in the email with extreme caution.

Email Address Oddities

The same is true for an email address. There are instances where phishing emails use names you may recognise, such as friends, acquaintances or company names, but the email address is different. If you’ve received emails from a friend or company before, but never from this particular email address, it’s best to contact your friend or the company with an email address that you’ve interacted with before to ensure the sender is known.

If the email address ends in gmail.com, hotmail.com, outlook.com, protonmail.com and the sender is a professional or a company, you have an automatic red flag. Sometimes business emails can also have addresses that look very similar to authentic domain names, but they have one letter that is different.

Generic Greetings

If a company or person is sending you an email, they are almost certainly going to use your first or last name.

Phishing emails are often generic, as they may be sending them out en masse to many email addresses. An email that starts with a generic greeting, such as “Hello customer” is an automatic red flag.

Writing Quality

Spam emails may be written in very poor English, which can help you identify that you are not being contacted by someone from a reputable business. Companies always send business emails that are professionally written and proofread.

Links, Attachments and Personal Information

If you have the slightest doubt regarding the authenticity of an email, do not click on anything or open an attachment within that email. Even clicking on a link could expose your device or network to a virus.

Avoid giving any personal information in response to an email. A genuine business would never ask you to email personal details, such as your date of birth, ID number, passport or photo identification images, or bank account details.

Extremely Positive or Negative Emails

There are two common ways that phishing emails attempt to target users – they either claim something extraordinarily positive or warn you about something significantly negative.

An email may say you are being audited and that you owe thousands of dollars back in taxes in an attempt to scare you into a response. Other emails may claim you have won a free gift card, which you can only access by clicking the link within the email. Unfortunately, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

How DreamIT Host Tackles Phishing Emails

As the premier domain and email hosting provider in Australia, DreamIT Host uses MailScanner to protect customers from viruses on our servers. MailScanner also ensures you do not receive spam emails, malware or phishing emails.

The small business email hosting services we provide are the best way for your business to have access to a secure email platform with your company domain name. By practising vigilance and trusting our anti-phishing mechanisms, you can avoid running into problems because of fraudulent emails.

Click here to view DreamIT Host’s Email Hosting plans.