Phishing E-mails: How to Distinguish Safe E-mails and the Top 10 Most Imitated Companies

According to a recent report from Check Point, the most imitated brands for phishing e-mails top 10 included tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, WhatsApp, Google, and LinkedIn. While it is interesting to see that the scammers are trying to imitate the most well-known companies, it reminds us to learn more about how to distinguish the real from the fake. In the end, it is mostly the user who causes the security breaches and it is important to learn not to fall for the “phishing e-mail” trap.

Pixabay

What is a Phishing E-mail and why do they imitate big companies?

A phishing e-mail is a type of hack that requires social engineering. Usually, the hacker sends a fraudulent message that seems convincing and official and tries to convince you to click or sign in through their given link or portal. In the end, the hacker gets your credentials and gets access to your data. The reason why they imitate big companies is that they are trying to increase the convincing nature of the e-mail. In fact, since we use the services of top companies every day, it becomes even easier to click or sign in through a whim and realize that we have been hacked. Therefore, read every e-mail twice if it requires you to sign in or click something.

Also, the data from Check Point suggests that these are the top 10 most imitated companies for cybercrimes:

Check Point

How can you distinguish a phishing e-mail from others?

To a trained eye, distinguishing these kinds of e-mails is not very hard. However, sometimes, the imitators are really professional at their job, which makes it difficult even for the best of the best to notice the difference in the flow of daily life. Despite that, here are the few things you can look out for:

1. E-mails Demanding Immediate Action: Usually, if the e-mail is not a scam, no one asks for an immediate sign-in, password change, or information entering the session. So, usually, if an e-mail says “URGENT: Click here to restore BLABLA”, it is usually a sign that it is a fraud.
2. E-mails Requesting Sensitive Data: Usually, sensitive data such as your password, credit card numbers, and similar stuff are things you should not share anywhere at any time except for the official websites of the services you use. Even then, some scammers replicate the official website with slight changes and make it harder to detect the scam. Our advice is that if you are required to enter sensitive data, check if the portal you are using is the official website’s one. You can always check the certificates and owners of the website through your browser. So stay safe and be careful.
3. E-mails with Bad Writing: It can be grammar mistakes, informal language, vague explanations, or weird words, if something seems out of place, it usually is fake. Check if your e-mail has one of these.
4. E-mails with Weird Senders, Domains, Links: Ever came across an e-mail that came from “1982734727412xyzyysytausdf@wpoeıxyz.com” but the e-mail was titled “Google Security Code”. Well, that is probably a scam. Please stay away from e-mails with links that seem to be broken, domains that seem like they are randomly generated, and senders that seem like made-up names.
5. E-mails with File Attachments: It is very natural for an official e-mail to have an attachment as well. However, if an attachment seems to be very weird, empty, or straight-up slow your computer, it may mean that it was used for a phishing attack. Since one can easily write “macro”s on a word document, please stay away from suspicious attachments that are empty or go nowhere. Inform an expert if you have clicked one as well.

Well, there are many more detailed things that give away a phishing scenario as well, in fact, your e-mail service probably checks for things that I have talked about above automatically. But still, some slip up. So, always try to double-check things even though you are in a hurry.

Pixabay

Even though an e-mail seems very convincing, be aware that scammers are very well equipped to produce a phishing setup for everything. That’s why they are even imitating companies that you see everywhere every day in their phishing e-mails. Therefore, especially if you are using a device that can access critical data for your company or yourself, please double-check things that you click. Even Norton had a problem with their customers because of issues like CPU access as I have written in a previous article titled “Antivirus Giant Norton’s Cryptomining Scandal: Here’s What Is Actually Happening”

Do your own research, double-check things, and always be aware of the traps that await us in the digital world. Stay safe! Both digitally and really of course!