I receive emails and phone calls every day from worried people all around the Costa Blanca, asking whether the email they have just received from Microsoft, Yahoo, Adobe, Apple (insert any company name you like here), is legitimate. Of course, the honest answer is “I don’t know without looking at it”. Most of these emails are so sophisticated and look so much like the real thing that it’s almost impossible to tell whether the one you’ve just received is a scam, spam or legitimate so this month I hope to give you some pointers in order to help you figure out truth from fiction.
First pointer is to immediately assume it’s a scam. In reality, its actually much more likely that the email you have just received “out of the blue” is NOT legitimate, the problem comes when you’re expecting something, for example you’re waiting for a package from Correos and you happen to receive a phishing email seemingly from the same company – beware!
Second pointer – and this is the one that catches most of us out – is to question whether the email makes sense. If you have just received an email from Microsoft within minutes of trying to reset your Outlook email account, then it’s likely to be legitimate. If you have received an email out of the blue then it’s likely not to be legitimate.
That brings me onto the third pointer. Many of these emails are informing you that your account has been suspended or that some suspicious activity has been spotted on your account and that you should click on a link to deal with it – these seem legitimate. They almost always are not! Rather than clicking on the link in the email, just visit the account in question in your normal way – if it’s really suspended then you will find out that way and you can be sure that you are on the legitimate website.
Pointer four – check the address without clicking on it inside the email. Ok this is a bit more technical, but it will give you a good idea if the link is good or bad. In most email clients you can hover the mouse pointer over the top of a link or button and the address will be shown at the bottom of the screen in the status bar just as in the screen shot below…