Today we will explain an electronic fraud technique known as Spoofing, which is when someone tries to impersonate someone else on a network. Come on, in the email they tell you it’s someone they’re not.
Email spoofing is when a person or entity’s email address is impersonated. This is usually used to spread fake news or hoaxes, but also for other more dangerous activities such as phishing to try to collect money from you or installing malware under the guise of the person or entity they are pretending to be.
What is email spoofing?
A spoofing attack is an attack where someone tries to trick you by falsifying their data, and there are several categories depending on the technology they use. On the one hand, there is IP Spoofing, which is when they modify their IP to look like another user, but there is also ARP spoofing, DNS spoofing, and Web spoofing where fake websites are modified to look like the real thing.
There is also something called email spoofing, which is a series of techniques used to impersonate another person or sender in an email. This is possible because the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer) protocol, which is mainly used for sending emails, does not include an authentication mechanism.
This means that when someone spoofs an email to you, you will receive an email from a certain George or Billy, or from your reference bank, but the person who hasn’t actually sent you the email is not George, Billy, or your bank, but someone else impersonating them. As you can imagine, this is usually done for malicious purposes such as phishing, trying to get you to download malware or provide them with personal or tax data.
Be careful with emails in the Spam folder
Fortunately, today most of the major companies that offer dedicated email accounts can detect the main Mail Spoofing impersonations, and they usually send them straight to the Spam folder. That folder exists for a reason, so you should be suspicious of all emails that go into it. There may be some that come by accident, but generally, they’re the ones that your Gmail or Outlook account detects as real spam.
Of course, the problem is when you have a company or website, and email with your own domain that you may not have the same security system as Gmail and other large companies.
If so, don’t worry, because we still have some more tips for you. The tips below do not require special software, but for more accurate results, using a technology-based spam test solution is recommended.
Gmail notifications
At this point, pay attention to any notifications that Gmail or your email system may send you. When many people have marked a particular sender as spam if that sender sends you an email, then the email will go to the spam folder, and if you open the email, there will be a prominent notification informing you of this.
Look at the email
The first step you should take when receiving any email is to carefully check the sender’s address. In an incoming email, you might say that it comes from a certain person or entity, but the address says something completely different.
Observe with attached file
It’s rare that your mom writes to send you a PDF, or that the person who first contacts you does so to send you something. Therefore, observing attachments is another way to detect when someone is impersonating someone else, especially in an attempt to bait you into trying to sneak in some malware via email spoofing.
Pay attention to how it is written
This is a tip that may seem a little silly, but it can help you detect fake emails. Often, even if the attacker pretends to be a person from your country, he may actually be a foreigner and have written the email with Google Translator. In this case, you will almost certainly come across strange words or expressions that immediately catch your attention.
These are simple methods for detecting potential email spoofing that you can do without the help of software. But for truly certain results, using a technological approach is best.
