Hello! We hope that you are doing well.
Emails, don’t we just love them? We may be constantly checking our inboxes eagerly anticipating the next email to arrive, does that sound like you? Well, we might have gotten carried away!
Electronic mail or e-mail entered the public sphere in the 1990’s (it was in limited commercial use beforehand) and ever since then, it has made life easier for us in terms of communication.
Spam (not the food product!) also called junk mail, is when we receive undesired and unsolicited emails. It usually is sent in bulk to many people and contains links to other websites, contains attachments (files added onto the email) or asks you for personal details.
As a rule of thumb, never open up spam emails as some attempt to copy genuine emails from banks, postage couriers and the like. This technique is called phishing and unfortunately people can fall into the trap of clicking on the links contained within the email (which then can cause viruses to enter a person’s computer etc.)
Here are some tips from us to spot spam emails:
- Look at the subject email, genuine emails tend to have a “sensible” subject e.g. “hello”, “join now” as opposed to sensationalist ones e.g. “man earns £1000 overnight”, “you are due a refund” etc.
- Look at who the sender is. Do you recognise their name or the company that it is sent from?
- Look at the email address, what does it say after the “@” symbol? Some try to be clever and imitate big companies or banks e.g. Amazon, Royal Mail, Paypal, The Government. However, a genuine email from, say Royal Mail, will always be “@royalmail.com” so if an email address is no-reply@mail.royalmail.org, know that it is most likely fake as the correct email address would have been no-reply@royalmail.com.
- Who is sending the email? Institutions like banks do not send emails asking for personal details, they never do, they tend to write to you via letters and they have secure checks in place to identify you. If in doubt, always call.
- If you do open a spam email, how is their spelling and grammar like? Does the email look professional?
- Finally, if you are in doubt whether the email is genuine or not, always call the company to double check e.g. call your bank to verify whether they emailed you etc.
There you have it! These are just some tips from us to assist you in spotting potential spam emails.
Here at Life’s Tutoring, we offer IT support services to ensure that you have peace of mind when it comes to your computing needs. Contact us to find out more.
Have a great day.
Take care and be safe as always.
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