Scam emails are often pretending to be from big brands, companies, supermarkets, retailers and deal sites or from trusted government departments.Ĭhecking branding and keeping an eye on the quality of branded logos, etc, in the email can strongly indicate if the email is a scam. If you see this level of inconsistency, it’s probably a scam. We came across an email scam in March 2017, which said the closing date of the competition being advertised in the email was December 31st 2016.

In the bottom left-hand corner of your web browser, the web address where the link goes to will appear.Īre the copyright dates (or any others) up to date? Often scammers will forget this detail. To see where a weblink links to without actually clicking on it, simply hover your mouse cursor over the link. 3 Check contact information and datesĭoes the 'contact us' information at the bottom of the email link to anything? Is it clickable? Are the websites it links to genuine? If the answer is no, you should be on your guard. This impersonal approach to contacting you is another sign that it’s likely to be a scammer behind the email. Sometimes scam emails will just say “Hi” and not include your name, other times your email address will be used after “Hi”. Increasingly you will notice that scammers are getting better at sending emails which include our name in the first line of the message. To find out if there’s a fraudster behind what looks like a genuine sender, use your mouse to hover the cursor over or right-click on the sender name and you should see the email address behind it. Scammers often change its name to make it look more like it is from the company or organisation they are pretending to contact you from.Ī scam email usually has a fairly bizarre email address behind what looks like a genuine sender name. It’s always worth checking the address the email comes from for spoofing.

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