1. Look closely at the email address
Whenever you receive an email that’s asking for some personal and sensitive information, inspect the email address carefully. Scammers can pretend to be from a well known supplier or a colleague. If it is from someone you know, contact them separately to check if they are expected to send the email. Try not to forward on any suspicious emails.
2. Be aware of emails marked as urgent
You need to be really careful if the email is marked as urgent or declared urgent in the subject. Scammers can send emails pretending to be a colleague or service provider.
3. Observe spellings, syntax, or grammar
Pay keen attention towards the spellings, grammar and the sentence structure of the emails that you receive. Wrong spellings, faulty sentence structures, and silly grammar mistakes are the key identifiers of any phishing email.
Scammers feel safe when attacking from a country other than the UK and their English is normally quite weak, so you must pay attention to typos, grammar mistakes, etc.
4. Be aware of strange email attachments
Another key highlighter of a phishing email is, they are usually received from an unknown source or a person. Moreover, sometimes they can be classified as unexpected emails. These emails often contain attachments which you must not open at any cost, as they can contain malware that can be harmful to your computer.
5. Check the Links within the emails
Phishing emails often ask you to visit a particular landing page by providing links within the email. They may even look similar to a website you normally log into. You can easily identify the authenticity of the email by moving your mouse on the link and read the URL carefully, such URL’s are mostly misspelled or completely different from the link or the information provided in the email.
If you receive an email you believe to be malicious please report it Using the 'Report Message' Button in Outlook.