Balunywa Bytes: 10 Ways to Tell Whether a Person Emailing You is Real

Thursday, July 21, 2011

10 Ways to Tell Whether a Person Emailing You is Real

If your email box looks anything like mine, it’s crammed with messages – some of which are from people I’ve never heard of, and didn’t care to hear from either. Who are these people and why are they emailing me? If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, then read on. I’m going to share with you 10 ways that you can tell whether someone emailing you is for real.

Check names of other recipients – If you notice that the email has been sent to other parties whose email addresses are very close alphabetically, chances are the message was sent by a bot. In other words, if your email address is Dave43@isp.com, and the email has also been sent to Dave44, Dave46, etc., then you know the email is bogus.
Verify Claims – If an email makes reference to a news story, or a financial opportunity, you can usually check online to see if it’s authentic. Anything of that sort which you’ve received in your mailbox, if it’s truthful, will more than likely have been posted on a trusted website as well. If it’s bogus, on the other hand, it might be documented on sites like snopes.com.
Gone Phishing – One tip-off that an email is a phishing attempt is a request for personal or account info. If an email purports to be from a trusted site such as a financial institution, and asks you for private data, then you know something’s phishy. In any case, emails that ask for such info should generally be regarded as a security risk.
Verify the Sender’s Address – Make sure that the sender’s address actually matches the entity or location from where it claims to be sent. Phony emails will have a trustworthy-sounding name in the “From” box, but an actual email address which doesn’t match.
Generic Greetings – If the email greets you with “Dear Valued Customer”, or “Dear Friend”, etc., it’s probably not genuine. Legitimate companies have software that personalizes their greetings by matching them to the recipient’s name.
Check the Grammar/Spelling – It’s probably fake if it’s written poorly. Genuine emails of an official nature are highly unlikely to contain grammatical or spelling errors.
Bogus Website Address – Whenever an email provides a link to a website which it claims to be legitimate, but has extra characters on the end (i.e.: www.citibank.com/scam?uid5tg), that’s an indication of a fraud.
“Update Your Records” – Companies will not request that you update account information via email. If there is any doubt whatsoever as to the origin of the email, go to your account via a trusted or bookmarked link rather than the one provided in the email. You can confirm there whether your account is up to date, or by calling a trusted number to speak directly with a representative.
“Do I Know You?” - Confirm whether the sender is someone with whom you’ve ever done business with or contacted before. If not, you can be certain that the email is either spam or a phishing attempt.
“I’ve won what now?” – It’s not likely that you’ve been selected as the winner of a sweepstakes that you don’t even recall entering. Nor are the odds very good that you’re on speaking terms with Nigerian royalty. So act accordingly.