Spotting Email Spoofing and Email Phishing is easy when you know what to look for. Read the definitions and examples below and protect yourself from these cybercriminals.

Email Spoofing

According to TechTarget.com:

Email spoofing is the forgery of an email header so that the message appears to have originated from someone or somewhere other than the actual source. Email spoofing is a tactic used in phishing and spam campaigns because people are more likely to open an email when they think it has been sent by a legitimate source.  The goal of email spoofing is to get recipients to open, and possibly even respond to, a solicitation.

Although most spoofed email falls into the nuisance category and requires little action other than deletion, the more malicious varieties can cause serious problems and pose security risks. For example, a spoofed email may purport to be from a well-known shopping website, asking the recipient to provide sensitive data such as a password or credit card number. Or the spoofed email may ask the recipient to click on a link that installs malware on the recipient's computing device.

Email Phishing

Phishing is a type of online scam where criminals send an email that appears to be from a legitimate company and ask you to provide sensitive information. This is usually done by including a link that will appear to take you to the company’s website to fill in your information – but the website is a clever fake and the information you provide goes straight to the crooks behind the scam.

The term ’phishing’ is a spin on the word fishing, because criminals are dangling a fake ’lure’ (the email that looks legitimate, as well as the website that looks legitimate) hoping users will ’bite’ by providing the information the criminals have requested – such as credit card numbers, account numbers, passwords, usernames, and more.

Did you receive a spoofed email from us?

Recently some of our clients have received spoofed emails from Graydon-Toole employees. The best course of action is to delete these or call us directly if you have questions about a bill or invoice.