Many people tend to associate the word “spam” with spam emails. But, in reality, spam has a much broader definition that includes spam sent via text, in a direct message, or even as comments on forums, social platforms or websites. Not all spam are scams but many do have malicious intent such as theft of personally identifiable information (PII) or money. Learn how to get spam emails to stop with Managed IT Services Vermont. Different types of spam include:
- Advertisements
- Chain Letters
- Email Spoofing
- Hoaxes
- Money Scams (Remember the Nigerian prince?)
- Malware Warnings
- Porn Spam and more.
Criminal spammers typically send out spam messages in bulk and even if a handful fall for the scam out of fifty thousand or a million – they can still collect valuable personal and financial data and even money from the victims. IT Consulting Vermont can help your company Block Spam Emails effectively.
4 Top Tricks for Spotting Spam
1. The message contains links that do not match with the URL
Checking for the validity of the embedded URLs will generally provide the user with the first clue as to whether they should treat a mail as suspect. In order to do this, just hover your mouse over the link of the URL and do not click on it. This enables you to see whether the hyperlinked address is different from the address that is displayed. If it is different, then the email is fraudulent and should be reported and trashed right away.
2. URLs contain a misleading domain name
Hackers often like to exploit user’s lack of awareness about DNS naming structure for domains. Users should make it a point to remember that the last part of a domain name is the most revealing. The right hand side of a domain name contains the actual domain name of any web address. If the domain name appears on the left hand side, the address is fraudulent as it belongs to another domain. Hackers like to appear legitimate beyond a shred of doubt and will often use widely recognised and respected domains such as Apple and Ebay. In this case, the malicious domain name may appear to be like: Apple.maliciousdomainname.com.
3. Poor spelling and grammar
This is generally a dead giveaway for users if they are dealing with any respectable organization over email. Since Microsoft or Red Cross is unlikely to get ‘dear’ and ‘deer’ mixed up, users can generally steer clear of such emails at a single glance. Any major corporation or even small to mid-level company is likely to get their communication reviewed by their marketing and legal teams before sending out an email blast to consumers or subscribers. Poor grammatical hygiene should also serve as a red alert.
4. Sender persists in asking for personal information
Even if an email appears to be entirely official, no company will persistently ask you for your personal information over email. Your bank shouldn’t be asking you for your account number as it should already be listed in its database. Similarly, any other company will never ask for your password or any such sensitive information such as credit card number, or answers to your confidential security questions.
3 Ways to Stop Spam Email
1. Don’t reveal your email address
Your email address should be private by nature and should be treated as valuable information. This is especially true for your primary email address. Try not to broadcast it over social profiles or handing it out to all and sundry as this could very well end up attracting the wrong kind of attention, such as scammers or bots. Make sure the settings on your social channels make your email address visible only to contacts you have recognized and accepted. If you want to prevent BOTS from scraping your email address from websites and social handles, one workaround could be to write it in longhand. For example, instead of “johndoe@google.com”, the longhand could be “John Doe at Google’s Email Service”.
2. Use a Third-Party Spam Filter
Adding a third-party spam blocker on top of the free spam blocker provided by your email hosting services provider can provide you with additional security to capture spam before they end up in your inbox. Some third-party spam filters even let you review the captured emails online so you can decide if they are indeed all spam messages. AI-enabled filters can even learn from your behavior and learn not to mark certain mails as spam.
3. Stop Interacting with Spam Emails
The best way to communicate with spam is to refuse to acknowledge its existence. Even if the spam is a request for you to remove yourself from a mailing list that you don’t want to be a part of in the first place, you should stop yourself from responding to search messages. Spam emails are designed to provoke a response from the user because any kind of communication is an indication that the account is active. This could result in even more spam messages being directed at your inbox. Also make it a point to never click on anything (including links and attachments) in emails from unknown senders – even if they appear legitimate. Always remember that over email it’s much harder for the user to ascertain if the sender really is who they say they are. Blocking Spam Emails can be easy with 100% managed email hosting from IT Support Vermont.
