{"id":87633,"date":"2019-04-18T16:36:17","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T11:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.quickheal.com\/?p=87633"},"modified":"2019-04-18T16:38:39","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T11:08:39","slug":"5-ways-instantly-detect-phishing-email-save-phishing-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/5-ways-instantly-detect-phishing-email-save-phishing-attack\/","title":{"rendered":"5 ways to instantly detect a phishing email and save yourself from phishing attack"},"content":{"rendered":"

Phishing is a fraudulent activity to trick you into revealing your personal and confidential information. This information usually includes bank account details, net banking details, credit\/debit card numbers, login ID and passwords.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Every day, countless people become unsuspecting victims of phishing attacks. With cyber criminals adopting sophisticated modes of phishing attacks, it can often be difficult for people to differentiate between a fraud and legitimate email message.<\/p>\n

While there is no thumb rule as such for making this differentiation since, the type of phishing email may vary, there are a couple of ways to help you spot a phishing email:<\/p>\n

#1 Spelling mistakes and poor grammar<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the simplest ways of spotting a phishing email is to check for grammatical and spelling errors. An email sent by a legitimate company would obviously go through its fair share of proof reading and legal compliances. Thus, an email containing too many spelling mistakes and grammatical errors is a clear indication that it\u2019s a phishing email.<\/p>\n

#2 Mismatched domain name and email address<\/strong><\/p>\n

A commonly observed thing in most phishing emails is a mismatched domain name and email address. Hackers, in an attempt to mislead people often times make use of company names that make the email look genuine. However, a close examination of the email address or URL is enough to show you the minor variation intended specifically to mislead you into clicking the link. A good way to cross-check the validity of such suspicious emails, is to hover over the URL to see the actual address.<\/p>\n

#3 Suspicious attachment<\/strong><\/p>\n

We receive numerous emails on a daily basis containing attachments for registration, subscription, feedback, etc. However, be absolutely wary of emails coming out of the blue that may contain suspicious attachments.<\/p>\n

In a recent detection by Quick Heal Security Labs, it was observed that a malicious PDF file<\/a> was being sent to users as an attachment via a phishing mail. While the PDF file looked like a regular document, it was actually a malicious file intended to lure the user into opening the document, to launch an Android malware into their device.<\/p>\n

#4 Request for personal information<\/strong><\/p>\n

Regardless of how authentic or official an email may look like, it\u2019s always a red flag if the message asks you to share personal information. As for banks, most of them make it a point to send out frequent advisory messages, asking customers to NEVER share any personal details like credit card number, password, OTP, security question, etc.<\/p>\n

#5 Offers that look too good to be true<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, who doesn\u2019t like discounts and offers but, the ones that look too good to be true could be a trap! Often times we receive emails announcing our name as the grand winner of a lottery. WAIT! Before you click on any such link to claim your reward, think whether you had even brought a lottery ticket or not.<\/p>\n

Emails, social media posts, advertisements, etc. have become some of the favourite platforms for cyber criminals to launch phishing attacks since, these are part of our daily life today.<\/p>\n

Thus, if you ever come across an email, attachment or post that looks suspicious\u2026 DELETE IT!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Phishing is a fraudulent activity to trick you into revealing your personal and confidential information. This information usually includes bank account details, net banking details, credit\/debit card numbers, login ID and passwords. Every day, countless people become unsuspecting victims of phishing attacks. With cyber criminals adopting sophisticated modes of phishing attacks, it can often be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":87635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,303],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-email","category-phishing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87633"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87634,"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87633\/revisions\/87634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quickheal.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}