<p style="text-align: justify;">Email phishing scams are nothing new, we&#8217;ve been hearing about them practically since the public protocols were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2002/mar/13/internetnews" target="_blank" rel="noopener">implemented in 1996</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">An email scam can come in many different forms and flavors but pose a real risk regardless. Personally and commercially, &#8220;social engineering&#8221; scams <a href="https://whnt.com/taking-action/bbb-consumer-alerts/email-scams-cost-consumers-1-3-billion-in-past-year/#:~:text=Email%20Scams%20Cost%20Consumers%20%241.3%20Billion%20in%20Past%20Year%20%7C%20WHNT.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cost us over $1.3 billion</a> per year as a society. these email scams have actually tripled in count in the past three years.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Take a look at these seven common tips experts often tell us to watch for!</p>
<h2>Mismatched Addresses, URLs, and Branding</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://newsforpublic.com/innovative-branding-ideas-business/">Branding</a> isn&#8217;t just something that helps a company sell a product or service. It also plays a role in identifying a product or service — and any communication — as genuine.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">If anything doesn&#8217;t feel right about the way the branding looks or if it is inconsistent with what you&#8217;ve seen before, check online to see if there&#8217;s been a rebranding. If the quality isn&#8217;t good, or it&#8217;s pixelated, it&#8217;s a good indication that the email is a scam of some kind.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Similarly, the links in the email are easily checked. If you right-click and select &#8220;Copy link address&#8221; and paste it in a text editor, you can see the destination of the link. Another method is hovering your mouse over it, and looking in the bottom left of your browser at the destination.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">On the matter of URLs, make sure it matches what you&#8217;ve seen in the past. An example would be if you get an email from what looks like Google but it goes to Google.info.org you should be suspicious.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Before you have verified the identity of an email sender as legitimate, you should never click on anything in the email, since it could be malware, ransomware, or a virus.</p>
<h2>Misleading Naming Convention</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Each email has a display name as well as an address. The display name shows a name the sender has chosen, such as &#8220;John Smith&#8221; in the sender. However the address could have a domain name of &#8220;goog1e.com&#8221; where the &#8220;1&#8221; visually looks like an &#8220;l&#8221; at first pass.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Many authorities have a published book that outlines how powerful this attack can be. Something like John.smith@goog1e.com has mislead millions of people over the year, to opening and clicking on links in malicious scam emails.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Another thing to watch out for is the way an URL is structured. For example, &#8220;info.domain.com&#8221; means the &#8220;info&#8221; part belongs to &#8220;domain.com.&#8221; Sometimes, however, scammers cleverly hide their fake domain in plain sight with tricks like &#8220;domain.info.com&#8221; with a domain of &#8220;info.com.&#8221;</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It&#8217;s important to know that whatever comes before .com, .gov, .org, .io, .edu, etc. is the domain name. The &#8220;dot-letter-letter-letter&#8221; suffix for Domain Name Servers (DNS) is to properly sort internet and email traffic.</p>
<h2>Confusing Grammar or Spelling</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Many of us struggle with wording things in a way that expresses our feelings, ideas, and intentions. This is different from <a href="https://newsforpublic.com/websites-help-improve-grammar/">bad grammar and spelling</a> which is just plain wrong.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">These kinds of errors indicate foreign scammers trying to pose as a US-based company. It&#8217;s unlikely that a large company vying for your trust in a legitimate market will make simple errors on a grade-school level. Many of these artifacts come from poor translations or misunderstandings of common expressions or words from non-native speakers.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Be careful though, as with the Goog1e example, different font families will hide some of these indicators. A 1, a lower-case l, and an upper-case &#8220;I&#8221; can sometimes look identical depending on the font.</p>
<h2>Requests for Personal Information</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">If you receive an email asking for personal information like a PIN, a credit card number, social security number, and so on, it&#8217;s a dead giveaway as a scam.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">No legitimate source will ask for security questions or passwords, or identifying information like birthdays and PINs through email — especially unencrypted email. Especially not without your initiating the conversation. Rather, they would ask you call in to an official and publicly listed support line or ask you to supply a one-time code during online chats.</p>
<h2>It&#8217;s Too Good to be True</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">If you&#8217;ve won a prize for a lottery or drawing you never entered, it&#8217;s a guaranteed scam. Usually at the bottom of such emails you&#8217;ll see outdated copyright information and other inconsistent information. Anything trying too hard to look &#8220;official,&#8221; including using the word &#8220;official&#8221; is a good sign of a false prize</p>
<h2>You Didn&#8217;t Initiate Anything</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In the same vein as not winning a prize you never entered for, if you receive a one-time code without initiating it, don&#8217;t use it. Instead, for whatever service you got the one-time code or password, it&#8217;s best to go to the URL for that service or product and reset your password manually.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Whether it&#8217;s for security questions for a prize, if you never had a relationship with the organization or you never asked for an OTP, it&#8217;s likely a scam.</p>
<h2>Looking for Processing Fees</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This kind of scam falls into the &#8220;money mule&#8221; scam, where you transfer money to a client or supplier. In return you&#8217;ll get a job.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">You may be told to send money to collect a prize. This is never how it works, and even if you do receive a check, it&#8217;s probably a fake or stolen check you are now in trouble for.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">If you are using a dating site and someone has sent money to you, never send money back. It&#8217;s also almost always a scam that has landed many a potential suitor in hot water.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>In Summary — It&#8217;s an Email Scam if It Makes You Uncomfortable</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In almost any situation that you have to do a double-take or extra time to figure out a normally simple operation, assume it&#8217;s an email scam. These are only seven of many more tricks that scammers use to trick you out of money or into performing an action on their behalf.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">At Vermont Republic, we&#8217;re always on the lookout for new trends like this in business, finance, and even education. We&#8217;re here to help you hold onto your lifestyle.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Want to know more? Keep browsing!</p>

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