Information Literacy In Real Life (IL IRL)

Identifying Scam Emails

You may have heard of massive emails scams that target users of a specific company and try to scam them out of money, like this recent scam using Amazon customers.

While some email scams may be obvious, other times, email scams may look entirely legitimate. This is because scammers rely on you not paying too much attention to an email, so they can scam you. 

Email scams will usually have urgent language in them, which might make you feel like you need to immediately take an action (like clicking a link to verify your password with a bank or calling a phone number to verify your social security number). If you think an email you received could be a scam, do not take the action they are requesting. Instead, reach out to the original source, using their official phone number or email, who is requesting this information (like your bank or the customer service department of a company).

One easy way to identify if something is a scam email is to look at the email address the email came from. Has this email address ever emailed you before? Does anything about the email look off to you? Be sure to check if the email is consistent with the company's website address and pay attention to what comes after the @ symbol. Scammers can usually create something very similar to the company's website address, but not exact.

To learn more about how to identify and protect yourself from scam emails, check out "11 Tips for Identifying Fake Websites and Phishing Emails."