With the holidays and tax season quickly approaching, spam emails – those that try to get you to click links or open attachments – are more prevalent in your inbox. Threat actors hope you are too busy to review the email before you click. Here are some simple things you can do to protect yourself.
- Verify the sender. While it might look like the email came from a friend or collegue, expand the sender information, especially on mobile devices to reveal the real email address.
- Are you expecting the attachment? Threat actors who are able to get into other peoples accounts, like to reply on a real email thread with attachments containing viruses. So make sure you were expecting the attachment.
- Verify the link! Hover over the link if on a computer or long press a link in an email on a mobile device until the link is shown (be careful if you accidentally short press you might go to the link which could have consequences). Links can send you to websites with embedded virus’s or force a download of malicious software.
In most cases if the email is asking for your credentials, it is malicious in nature. Overall be aware when you are opening emails.