How to Spot an Email Scam

The distributors of email scams provide misleading information, sometimes for the purpose of stealing the recipient's money. Therefore, you need to know how to spot a scam email and thereby avoid it. There are many signs that make it obvious the email is a scam.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Look for many words or sentences written in all uppercase letters or followed by a string of exclamation points. Professional people and businesses don't write this way.

2. Check the return address. People looking to perpetrate scams use free email accounts from providers such as Yahoo! and Hotmail.

3. Decide if the content seems too good to be true. For example, if you just received an email telling you just won the African lottery, equal to millions of American money, this didn't happen.

4. Count the grammatical and spelling errors. Most, but not all perpetrators of scams are not from the same country you are. Therefore, they usually don't have the same grasp of your language that you do. Again, professional people and company representatives check their emails for these errors before they send them.

5. Understand that if emails contain instructions to forward it, you should probably delete it instead. These chain mail type letters most often contain misleading information. If you aren't sure whether the information is untrue or not, search the Internet for proof. Try checking websites like Snopes that look into urban legends, chain emails and Internet hoaxes to find out the truth.

6. Remember that any email asking you to wire money by Western Union or a similar service is always a scam. In addition, don't give personal information to anyone who asks you do this.

7. Be wary of any email that claims to offer you a work at home job. The vast majority of these are scams. There are legitimate work at home jobs out there, but they don't email random people when they need workers.

Tips & Warnings

• Don't click on links included in emails that might be a scam. You could risk getting spyware or viruses on the computer. In addition, some of these links bring you a website that mimics a legitimate website, such as a bank's website. However, the designers of these websites want to steal your login information.

[bluecraze378]

on 10/26/2009 It's a good rule of thumb to not open any email with strange subject lines from people you don't recognize, especially if it looks like an ad, chain letter, message saying you "won" a prize or any sort of uninitiated business proposition.

I also use the SnapGuard pre-inbox filter on http://www.privacyharbor.com email that filters any first time or unsolicited emails into a place where I can either approve them, delete them or mark them as spam. The approved emails then go into my inbox and will never be filtered out again. This is cool cuz on other email services like gmail my junk filter is always putting legit emails from my friends and family in the junk folder and spam emails in my legit inbox which is really annoying.