Sooner or later you’ll get an email telling you you’ve won the lottery, ordered something you don’t remember ordering, missed a delivery, are due a tax refund, or that you need to “verify your account”. How do you know if you can trust these emails or not?
The first thing to know is that you can’t trust who the email says it’s from. Here’s a message from my spam folder:
It says it’s from someone called “Track My PPI”, whose email address is sigint@app.topica.com. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but I can’t tell from the email address that is shown. This is no more reliable than the address written at the top of a paper letter – it’s created by the sender. If they are dishonest, it may well be a lie. Just because it’s “the computer” doesn’t make it true. Continue reading How do I know if an email is genuine?