False emails are sent for a wide variety of reasons. Some of those reasons include emails sent for scam purposes to gather information on bank or gaming accounts, to gather personal information for identity theft or simply to mask the actual email author. To avoid falling for any of the many schemes false emails promote, it’s important to know how to identify emails that may be false. Where the large number of methods used to falsify an email don’t allow for a fully comprehensive list of identification techniques, the more common methods used to falsify an email are generally easy to pick up on.
Open the message header fully to examine the path of the email message. Look at the “Return-Path” section. It should match the same domain as the email address sender. For example, an email from firstname.lastname@example.org should have a return-path of email@example.com.
Read the message itself to identify the likelihood of its being a scam based on the message being sent. If the email message requests that you reply with personal information via return email, it’s likely a false email message. This is especially true when the business requests the information without you first contacting them in some way. Most businesses that communicate by email will not ask for your information through the medium, preferring to speak to you over the phone instead.
Check the salutation of the email for personalization. A scammer will likely only have your email address and not a name, so will keep greetings non-specific. If the message appears to come from a friend or company that you do business with and the salutation is vague, this points towards it being a false email.
Hover your mouse cursor over any links in the email. Up-to-date browsers or email clients will show you the actual link when hovering over it (often in the lower-left corner of the window) rather than whatever is displayed in the email body. It’s possible to mask an actual link so that it displays falsely when read, such as spoofing as "paypal.com," but by hovering over it you are shown the actual link. If the actual link differs from the displayed link in your email body then it indicates a false email.
Read the links carefully, searching for misspellings. A misspelled link is often a sign of a false email because it’s an attempt to send you to a site based on your assuming the site is a safe and known location. Further, major companies have editors that ensure corporate communication is professional; major misspellings and typos are thus a flag as well.
Try to highlight the words of the message to determine if the message is text or an image. While having a graphic as a message body isn’t proof of being a false email, it is a method of bypassing email filters that’s used by many scammers who send false emails. Because the words are embedded in the image, spam checkers cannot see them. Check for further indications of the email being false whenever you encounter this.
Check with the supposed sender by phone or by using a known email address or checking a corporate Web site before acting on an email that you suspect may be false.
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