To Catch a Scammer: 8 hacks for recognising an email scam

1. Is it badly written?

If you’ve received a scam – or ‘phishing’ – email before, you will have noticed that the sender’s spelling and grammar can leave much to be desired. What you might not have realised, however, is that these mistakes are often intentional.

Scammers want to find targets that are less observant, and therefore unlikely to grow suspicious at the site of poor language skills.

Spelling errors, bad grammar, distorted logos – all are tools used to weed out more-cynical targets.

Another reason that scammers introduce spelling errors is to get past spam filters, which often look out for various keywords and phrases commonly found in phishing emails.

Other tell-tale signs to look for in a badly-written scam email include a lack of personalised greeting – such as ‘Hi User’.

2. Where was it sent from?

Very few legitimate organisations will contact your business with an email domain name like ‘@gmail.com’. Not even Google staff members.

Check that the sender’s email address aligns with the content of the message. As an example, if you have been sent an email from PayPal and the address reads ‘paypal@gmail.com’, it’s definitely fake.

This is most obvious in SMS scams – also known as ‘smishing’ texts. If there’s a random number attached to the message, such as in the below example, then it is highly unlikely to be from a genuine source.

4. Is it too good to be true?

As lovely as it would be, it’s very improbable that you’re being given a £100,000 tax rebate or gifted a pair of expensive concert tickets.

Many scams rely on wowing you with megadeals that will sound too good to be true – because they are.

Below is an actual email advertising free bitcoin from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, as an example.

In these situations, you should contact whichever organisation has supposedly sent you the email and ask for confirmation. Don’t use numbers or addresses in the message – use details from the official website.

As tempting as the idea of a tax refund might be, it’s hardly worth putting yourself at risk.

5. Is it time-sensitive?

People make bad decisions when they’re under time pressure – a fact that fraudsters will try to take advantage of.

Are you being told you have a limited time to respond (such as ‘within 24 hours’ or ‘immediately’)?

Criminals will also often threaten you with negative consequences, like a fine. Messages like this are designed to cause panic, and make you act without thinking.

Try to slow down and think before you react. DO NOT click any links.

6. Does it include attachments or links?

Fraudsters are always looking for ways to progress you through the scam process and gather sensitive information. To do this, they often include links or attachments that appear inviting or necessary to click on.

One of the most common is infected attachments, such as a fake invoice. These might seem benign, but secretly contain viruses.

If you or an employee opens the attachment, it will be too late. The document unleashes malware onto the victim’s computer, which can be used to steal personal information.

Startups’ advises that you never open an attachment unless you are fully confident about where it’s coming from. Even then, keep an eye out for anything suspicious.

For example, if you receive a pop-up warning – don’t proceed. Contact the sender through an alternative means of communication and ask them to verify that it’s legitimate.

You can spot a suspicious link if the destination address doesn’t match the context of the rest of the email.

For example, if you’ve received an email from Disney+, you’d expect the link it is sending you to have a domain name like ‘disney.co.uk’.

Some suspicious links are harder to spot than others. Take this recent well-designed fraudulent email from software cryptocurrency wallet, MetaMask.

It was very hard for users to spot that something was wrong. However, the time pressure signal that ‘all unverified accounts will be suspended on Wednesday May 11 2022’ meant some customers didn’t buy into the scam and avoided clicking on the link.

In cases such as the above, a good rule of thumb is for your employees to carry out all responses to potential phishing emails in a new tab.

If the message is alerting you to look at something linked to an account you have with a company, organisation or retailer, they should log in or make the call separately under a new tab or window to corroborate it.