{"id":56227,"date":"2017-01-24T12:29:59","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T18:29:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pcmatic.com\/blog\/?p=56227"},"modified":"2017-01-24T12:29:59","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T18:29:59","slug":"spotting-malicious-email","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pcmatic.com\/blog\/spotting-malicious-email\/","title":{"rendered":"Can You Classify A Malicious Email?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m sure at times you think, “Wow–they said it AGAIN.\u00a0 Think before you click.\u00a0 We get it already!!”.\u00a0 But do you?\u00a0 Do you still look at your emails to confirm they’re coming from someone you know.\u00a0\u00a0Are you\u00a0checking the email address it came from to ensure it’s legitimate?\u00a0 Do you hover the links to be sure it is a secured page?\u00a0 If not, how do you know it is not a malicious email?<\/p>\n

We say these things, not to be redundant, but because it’s easy to get lazy.\u00a0 It’s easy to assume that email or attachment is safe, until your computer is infected.<\/p>\n

Could it be a malicious email?<\/h3>\n

As an example, I recently went to the Dominican Republic.\u00a0 We purchased a disk with all of our excursion photos on it; however, when we got home we realized we got pictures of a random couple instead of ours.\u00a0 We contacted the travel agent and booking agent from the excursion company.\u00a0 A few days later, I received an email from a random person\u00a0stating they found our pictures and would be emailing them to me.\u00a0 A few moments later, I receive an email with 72 images attached, along with a message stating they would be deleted in a week.\u00a0 Being skeptical, I emailed the two people I was corresponding with.\u00a0 They did some checking, and confirmed that “Jimmy” was legitimate.\u00a0 So I downloaded the photos, and they were free of any malware.<\/p>\n

The Red Flags<\/h4>\n

Although this example was not a malware attack, it very easily could’ve been.\u00a0 Here are the red flags that I noticed within the email:<\/p>\n