How to Report Email Fraud: Learn What to Do If It Happens to You

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Email Fraud Is a Very Common Scam. Learn How to Recognize It and How to Stay Safe!

Have you, a colleague or a friend ever received a suspicious email? It is of paramount importance to know how to report email fraud in order to avoid all the unpleasant consequences that might come from it, especially if we’re talking about the compromise of your business email – revenue loss, data breach, reputation damage, maybe even your dismissal. 

How to Report Email Fraud – Some Definitions

Email fraud or email scam refers to an “intentional deception for either personal gain or to damage another individual by means of email.” 

Some of the most common forms of email fraud are phishing, spoofing and business email compromise. Let us have a closer look at each of them. 

Phishing

As you can see in our Cybersecurity Glossary, phishing represents “a malicious technique used by cybercriminals to gather sensitive information (credit card data, usernames and passwords, etc.) from users. The attackers pretend to be a trustworthy entity to bait the victims into trusting them and revealing their confidential data. The data gathered through phishing can be used for financial theft, identity theft, to gain unauthorized access to the victim’s accounts or to accounts they have access to, to blackmail the victim and more.”

Most phishing scam emails appear to be from financial institutions, online retailers and services, social networks, government agencies or even from a colleague or a friend. The phishing email might even include photos and information from the legitimate website. 

Moreover, as one of our colleagues wrote, “They may even redirect you to the company’s website and collect the data through a false pop-up window. Or it can happen the other way around: they first request your personal data, then redirect you to the real website. Other times, they tell you that you have been targeted by a scam and that you urgently need to update your information in order to keep your account safe. That’s how millions of Walmart consumers were tricked in 2013. All these gimmicks will minimize the chances for you to realize what happened.” 

Spoofing

Spoofing, on the other hand, “is a compromise attempt during which an unauthorized individual tries to gain access to an information system by impersonating an authorized user. For example, email spoofing is when cyber attackers send phishing emails using a forged sender address. You might believe that you’re receiving an email from a trusted entity, which causes you to click on the links in the email, but the link may end up infecting your PC with malware.”

For cybercriminals it’s crucial to gain your trust and fall into their trap – they know you’re more likely to engage with the links or attachment an email contains if you believe it comes from someone familiar. 

Business Email Compromise

When it comes to business email compromise, my colleague Miriam clearly explained: 
 

The term covers a wide variety of malevolent behavior, but all forms of BEC have one thing in common: they need to get access to a business email account or to fake it. In some cases, the BEC practice can refer to malicious actors spoofing or hacking into your business email account, in order to send fraudulent emails to your colleagues, employees or business partners. In others, they could be spoofing or hacking into the business email account of a partner, in order to send you emails and gain an advantage from you. In all cases, whenever malicious third parties can manage to compromise a business email, they will work to make it worth their time, and extort the maximum amount of money and data that they can get their hands on.

How to Report Email Fraud – “Phishy” Signs

Want to know exactly what to look for in an email fraud? Below are a few signs that indicate that email you received is suspicious and should be reported: 

• the email does not contain your name or there is a blank space where the name should be
  
• the email contains spelling or grammar errors
  
• the sending email address is inarticulate or does not match the company name
  
• the images, colours and branding in the email does not match the official website 
  
• the email contains a request from a company you haven’t interacted with before
  
• you receive a delivery notice you did not expect
  
• you are notified that you received a prize from a competition you did not enter 
  
• you receive urgent requests of money 
  

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