Suspicious emails

There are millions of emails sent every single day, unfortunately many of them are not as innocent as they may seem, according to the Symantec 2017 Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR), 1 in 131 emails contained malware in 2016, the highest rate in 5 years.

According to Verizon's 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report, two-thirds of all malware was installed in email attachments in 2016. 60% of malware was attached in JavaScript, also 26% was attached in malicious macros embedded in Microsoft Office documents.

The reason it has been growing in popularity is because hackers can replicate a legitimate email perfectly, it can be hard to spot what is real and what isn’t. However, there are a few steps you can follow to reduce the risk of being a victim.

1. One of the quickest ways to identify a fraudulent email is poor English, a lot of the time the message would have been written in another country and been translated. You’ll be able to spot simple mistakes which is a quick red flag.

2. Another good tip is to look out for whether an email was addressed to you personally, a fraudulent email would have been sent out to hundreds of people using titles such as ‘Dear Customer’. A proper email will most likely use your name if it was provided.

3. Lastly, it’s always a very good idea not to follow links from an email, if you feel you need to login into your online banking because of a suspicious email, always open your search engine and go to the website yourself.

There are some fascinating statistics being published which can give you a quick insight into the scale of malicious emailing, please follow the link to find out more:

https://blog.barkly.com/phishing-statistics-2017