How To Spot A Spam Email

Your guide to spotting spam emails and avoiding getting scammed!

With a lot of people spending more time online and at home, spam emails masquerading as notifications. So how can you tell the difference between a real notification email, and a fake one?

1. Look out for any typo’s

When reading through an official email, from Apple, Amazon, or any business, if you see typos, it should raise some suspicion. The real companies have lots of people proofreading and checking their emails, and it is extremely unlikely that their emails will have typos.

2. Look at who it’s addressed to

Generally, if a company has your name and contact information legitimately, they will use software that automatically inserts your name into the start of the email. If the email starts off with something generic like “Dear Customer”, it might be a fraudulent. Though, we would advise trying to next steps to be sure.

3. Check the email address

Often spam emailers will use various software to make an email look legitimate, and even use the right spelling! However, if you aren’t sure about an email you’ve received, or you’re not sure it’s even a service you’re using, we would advise you to look at the email! People can change the name of their account to appear as ‘Amazon’ or ‘Apple’, but they cannot change the email address.

Official emails don’t include random strings of letters or numbers, and will generally be from @companyname.com (and may or may not have .au at the end). This is a surefire way of knowing if an email is fraudulent.

4. Go through official channels to the websites

This is the final way, incase you are anxious about unpaid bills. Emails will often include links or buttons to click in order to take you directly to the page. However, if it is a spam email, those links will take you to a website that looks the same, and then when it asks you to login, it will steal your information.

Instead of clicking on the links or buttons in the email, google the company or go straight to the web address. By doing this, you can check your account in a way that you are 100% sure is official!

Here’s an example of one we received just the other week!

Which looks very legitimate! The wording is a little bit awkward, but nothing too weird.