4 Common Reasons People Fall for Email Scams

Ever since emails started becoming a natural way for people to communicate with each other, there have been scammers looking to take advantage of this.

By understanding some of the most common reasons why people fall for these scams, you will put yourself in the best possible position to not fall victim to them yourself. So, here are a few of the main reasons why people fall for email scams:

Triggering Panic

A lot of phishing emails are designed to trigger a sense of panic in the recipient.

For example, it could read that your bank account has been breached and you need to take immediate action to rectify the problem. The problem with panic is that it overrides the rational part of your brain, and you can end up making a decision that you wouldn’t normally make. So, when you are reading an email, always remember to take a breath and double-check its veracity.

Poor Staff Training

A lot of phishing scams happen at work, and a major reason why this is the case is that staff members are simply not properly trained and cannot identify the scams as they are occurring.

One way of rectifying this is with a DMARC strategy, which an organization like Proofpoint can help you out with. So, if you run a business or you are in a senior position, you need to do your bit to ensure that staff training is made a priority.

Offers Too Good to be True

The classic email scams are those that declare that the recipient has won a cash prize or a competition of some description. The best way of protecting yourself against them is to realize that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Whatever you do, don’t click on any links sent by organizations that you don’t recognize. If the competition is legitimate, you can visit the website and contact the company via another means.

Designed to Look Legitimate

A favorite technique among hackers in recent years has been to imitate legitimate organizations.

Often, you can tell that this is the case through spelling and grammatical mistakes, or simply by the fact that something doesn’t look right. However, there are other times in which this may not be quite so obvious. So, take extra care about clicking on anything that you aren’t sure about. Also, if you receive any spam emails, report them to your email provider to give them the opportunity to improve their filtering system as much as possible.

Unfortunately, hackers and scammers continue to become more and more sophisticated.

So, this means that you need to have your guard up even more than it was originally. As people become wise to the original scams, this inevitably means that more are going to spring up further down the line.

Therefore, you should make it a priority to keep up with the latest news regarding email scams and how you can best protect yourself.