How Do You Deal With Spam Emails In Your Professional Inbox?

Continuing with our current blog series, we are going to be discussing how to deal with spam and phishing in your inbox. Today's focus will be on how to spot these hazardous emails, how you can fight back, and how to protect yourself from any and all dangers lurking in your email! 

Hello readers! Hello Summerville! Welcome to the Creative Consulting blog, coming to you from the heart of Summerville, SC just a little drive up from Charleston, SC! We hope that wherever you are that this blog finds you healthy and well! While we are still battling with the effects of a global pandemic, there is another difficult fight that many companies have to deal with daily; fighting spam and phishing comments, messages, and emails across their entire digital fingerprint. The scams and those behind them are becoming harder to recognize as spam, and they are becoming more intelligent and malicious every day. As we've been discussing through this blog series, it's something that everyone deals with, something that you can't give up fighting on, and something that sometimes is very hard not to fall into.

As we hinted in the first blog of this series, spam emails are starting to look more legitimate every day, becoming more tailored to their target audiences, and hard to recognize as spam. These emails can cause fear, frustration, lead to a virus destroying your personal or work computer, or expose sensitive information from your personal or professional life. We've seen it in the news multiple times as cybercrime has grown; a giant corporation will get hacked and millions will have their personal information exposed or personal information gets into the wrong hands. However, even more frightening is the fact that these scams can happen to anyone and any size company. These spammers and hackers don't discriminate, they just keep on working. How can you recognize spam emails and how can you protect yourself against them? That is what we will be discussing today! 

How Do You Recognize Spam Emails? 
Why put such a big focus on spam in email form? Why disguise them as big bank chains, Netflix, or Amazon? Email is a very cheap and costless platform that allows spammers and hackers to reach high volumes of individuals very quickly. Why the popular chains? It's the fact that almost everyone is connected to at least one if not all of these popular resources, making the scams look incredibly believable. According to westtek.com, more than 95% of emails sent throughout the world are more than likely spam. According to the Cisco Talos Intelligence Group, it has been found that 84% of world wide email traffic is unsolicited and malicious. With statistics like that, how can you fight against something so powerful? How can you recognize what is spam and what is not? 

• Make sure you know who is sending you an email before opening it. If you receive an email from someone you don't know or a company you've never heard of, approach it with caution. 
• Legitimate companies and real people will address you by name when sending you an email. A very generic greeting or one that feels inappropriate like "hi dear", "valued customer", "sir or madame", or "to who it may concern", is more than likely spam. Legitimate businesses would always address you professionally and by name. 
• Have you received an email that promises incredible wealth, weight loss, or an amazing deal? If something sounds too good to be true, it more than likely is. Spam will attract its readers with very promising and exciting titles and will entice readers by saying, "all you need to do is click here!". Avoid these emails as much as possible, and please do NOT click anything! 
• Many phishing or spam emails will ask you for very private and sensitive information. Real companies and individuals will never ask for this through an email. 
• One sure fast way to spot a spam email is finding very blatant spelling and grammar mistakes. Companies like Amazon and Netflix would never have common grammar or spelling mistakes in their emails. 
• Not only should you know who the email is from, but you need to watch for spoof email addresses. Many spammers and hackers will create email domains that look real and professional but are just a little off. You can take your mouse and hover over the email and see if any strange alterations like letters or random numbers have been added to the address. If it doesn't look professional or is just slightly off, it most likely is. 
• Avoid emails that are threatening or urgent. Causing fear and panic in their target audience is a very common tactic for phishers and scammers. They want to scare you into acting without thinking and giving up your personal information. No professional would threaten you. 
• Legitimate companies never force you to visit their website and they wouldn't send unsolicited attachments or documents for you to view. If you receive phishing or scam emails with website links or attachments, please do not open them or click them! This could give your computer a virus or allow the sender to take any personal information available on your computer. 
• A lot of the time, spam will call itself out by saying, "this is not spam!". That is the biggest red flag! A real company or individual would never have to defend themselves like that. 
• Watch how the spelling of the company is presented in an email. Your brain might not catch it right away, but it can be one of the biggest red flags that the email you're reading is a scam! For example - PayPal spells their name with two capital Ps. An email from the company would never spell its name as paypal. 

How Do You Protect Yourself From Spam Emails? 

• First off, please install or have someone install anti-spam and anti-virus software on your computer. This special software will tag emails that are spam and can block viruses, phishing attacks, and dangerous malware. 
• Only give your email address out to people you trust and to companies you trust. Even then, you do need to approach giving your email out to companies with caution. Never post your email address publicly! 
• Once you've recognized a suspicious or spam email, don't open it and do not respond to it. 
• If you are someone who enjoys signing up for online contests, deals, and more, try to avoid using your personal or professional email address when you do so. Don't use any email account that is connected to sensitive information like your bank account or Amazon account. 
• Spam and other attacks can appear on your phone, too. To help prevent this, let your phone's software update automatically. 
• When you have the option for multi-factor authentication to log in to certain sensitive accounts, always choose these options. It will be a two-step process to log into these accounts, making them much more difficult to break into. 
• Always back up your data, and make sure that the backed-up information isn't connected to your home or work network. Do this for all of your smart devices. 
• Set up email filters to detect and get rid of spam before you even open it. Depending on your email platform, you can set certain words and phrases to be marked as spam and they can automatically be sent to your spam or mail folders. 
• When you receive a spam email, block them from sending you anything again. 

​How Do You Report phishing or scamming? 

• First, if you are concerned about your accounts you have been emailed about, instead of clicking on the links or visiting the website linked in the suspicious email, call the company instead and see if there is a problem. 
• According to the Consumer Information provided by the Federal Trade Commission, if you get a phishing email you can forward it to the Anti-Phishing Working Group at reportphishing@apwg.org. If you receive a phishing text message, forward the message to SPAM (7726)
• You can also report the attack to the FTC at ftc.gov/complaint. Follow the link below to learn more and directly visit the Federal Trade Commission website! 
• https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-recognize-and-avoid-phishing-scams

Checking your email and text messages should never bring you worry or stress about spamming or phishing, but sadly it happens every day. We hope this guide helps you to combat this daily issue, that it helps give you peace of mind, and that it helps to keep you and your company safe! If you have any more questions or comments, please never hesitate to reach out to us! If there is a topic you would like to see as a future blog, don't hesitate to reach out and share that with us as well! Until next time, stay safe and caffeinated Summerville!

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