How To Spot A Scam Email

As our internet security packages have become more sophisticated, so have the scammers. Whilst installing the most robust security measures will go a long way to keeping your computer safe, the easiest way to get into your system is to trick you as the ‘human’ user.

One such example that we received this week purported to be from Meta, the rebranded company name for Facebook. Social media is a notorious breeding ground for phishing scams, so sending an email that makes you believe is from Facebook is a common route to tricking you.

The email used the all-too familiar scare tactics; telling us that our Facebook page had violated terms and conditions and was going to be unpublished, and that we only had 24 hours to act.

Dolphin’s marketing division manages several Facebook pages in addition to our own, and therefore the initial reaction was, “Oh no! Which business’ Facebook page has a problem?” And this is exactly the reaction that these scam emails bank upon.

The email has content that is taken from Facebook’s terms and conditions (easy enough to copy and paste), and contains within it a link that upon first glance looks genuine:

They have even included the HTTPS – surely a secure site: https and facebook.com.

Let’s look at this link a little closer. If we hover our mouse over the link (DO NOT CLICK) we can see that the reference to Facebook remains, but there’s a lot more to this link than originally seen. Could it still be genuine? It does say facebook.com after all…..

This requires a little more delving – so let’s have a look at who sent us this email. The plain text states that it has come from Meta for Business:

However – if we look closer at the name on the email, and which email provider it is, we can hear the alarm bells ringing from the other side of the English Channel…..

Frometatrademark? Who? At Hotmail.com?

Facebook, and/or Meta would not be emailing you from a Hotmail account.

The criminals are getting better at making emails and websites look like the real thing, and whilst the security firms do their best to keep up it is still down to us as individuals to check once, twice, and sometimes even more to ensure we do not fall foul to their pesky scams.

The email in its full, glorious entirety is seen in the image below: