How to spot spam emails

Emails are an inevitable business need. Most businesses use emails as the formal mode of communication both inside and outside the organization. Unfortunately, this increase in email usage hasn't escaped the notice of spammers. Spammers send spam emails with the intention of promoting something. This could be a product, a scheme, or some other offer that the spammer is associated with.

Spam emails have been adding to the volume of emails sent every day, since time immemorial. In fact, 46% of emails sent every day are spam. The problem with spam emails is that they're a huge nuisance. When you're in the process of locating an important email, they get in the way and divert your attention. Due to the annoying nature of spam emails, it's a necessity for email recipients to handle them appropriately.

However, spammers are using increasingly deceptive techniques that mask the identity of the email and attain the goal of driving attention to their product. Though these emails aren't malicious in nature most of the time, they're still a waste of time and an unnecessary diversion for the email recipient. So, it's important to spot them at first glance and report them as spam. In this article, we'll take a look at how to spot spam emails.

What is a spam email?

Spam refers to junk emails that are sent out in bulk to recipients at random. These unsolicited emails have a commercial intent. They intend to promote certain products and direct the users to visit the product website or purchase a product.

They're purely commercial and nudge users towards a product. Typically, these emails are sent in large volumes in the hope that at least some of the recipients take the intended action.

In certain cases, other types of email threats such as phishing, malware, spoofing, and other scams are also referred to as spam. This broader category of spam emails includes promotional emails, sweepstakes winners, antivirus expiry warnings, spoofed emails, and free vacation offers. In this article, we'll be discussing spam emails that are not malicious in nature.

How to identify a spam email

Even though spammers have been creating spam emails at a rate higher than ever before, there are certain cues based on which these emails can be identified and reported.

Perform the basic verification steps

There are certain visually identifiable cues that stand out on preliminary inspection. If you spot these cues, you can avoid spending time on them. These basic verification steps need to be done on the sending email address and domain, the subject of the email, and the way the recipient is addressed or greeted.

 Sender details 

The most important aspect that needs to be noticed is the sender email address, the domain name, and the display name. In most cases, the spammer tries to use a display name that has the probability of eliciting the highest clickthrough rates on the email. So, instead of checking just the display name, make sure you verify if the sender's email address is legitimate and is actually relevant to the display name. You should also check if the sending domain name is one that you frequently interact with and ensure that it's not impersonating a renowned domain.

With an initial check of these sender details, you can get an idea of whether the sender email address is present in your contacts. If it's someone you haven't been associated with or an email you haven't requested, it needs to be treated with caution. 

Email subject 

The next factor to pay attention to is the email subject. Spam emails are composed with the intention to make people open and read the email. Because subject lines are the first point of contact that the sender makes with the recipient, a cleverly crafted subject line is one of the common characteristics of these emails. If an email's subject sounds too good to be true, if it's causing panic or creating a sense of urgency, the email needs to be approached with caution.

Some examples of these include, "Earn fast money," "Guaranteed free vacation," "One product for all of your household needs," and more along similar lines.

Salutation 

The greeting the email sender uses in the email is also a good indicator of whether the email has been sent without a request or subscription. If the email sender knows who they're sending the email to, it's most likely that they're using the proper salutation to refer to the email recipient. If the sender uses a generic salutation such as, "Dear user," or "Hi," or "Hello," to greet the recipient, it's possible that the sender is sending out the email in bulk and doesn't have sufficient information to greet the recipient appropriately.

This is one of the indicators of a spam email. While some legitimate emails might also lack proper salutation, this lack of familiarity probably means that this was a large volume email blast sent out to random email addresses scoured off the internet.

Nature of the email

Once the basic verification measures have been carried out, one possible way to identify spam emails is to read through the content of the email to identify if it's spam. By going through the content, you can determine the nature and intent with which the email has been sent.

Errors in the content  

With the introduction of AI, most spammers are resorting to using generative AI to compose their spam emails. In these cases, their emails are professionally created and there are no visible errors. However, there are still some instances where spammers use traditional methods to create these emails. In such cases, emails aren't perfectly worded. They contain grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. Spotting the prevalence of such mistakes is an easy way to identify if an email is spam.

Marketing tone 

By reading through the email, you can identify the tone and intention of the email. If the content aims to overly glorify and sell a product, it could be a spam email. Most legitimate marketers aim to highlight a product's features without being too pushy. So emails that are too salesy may not lead you to an authentic product. It's best to be wary of such emails and approach them with caution.

Unsolicited email 

In the previous section, we discussed the presence of marketing or sales tone in emails. By themselves, marketing emails aren't harmful. These emails are considered spam only when they're sent without consent or request. So, if the sender sends these emails without a subscription or request, these are classified as spam emails. When you come across emails that arouse suspicion, check if the email sender is a brand or product you've already signed up for. If it's something you're not acquainted with, the sender might have scoured the internet for email addresses and used them to send spam emails.

Alluring email content  

Most spam emails make big promises of quick money, free vacations, or a product that's bound to change your life. A good rule to keep in mind here is that, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If you spot any grand promises in the email, approach the email with caution. If the email is promoting a product with promises of free gifts or vouchers, it's possible that the spammer is desperate to get the email recipient to buy the product. Similarly, emails announcing sweepstakes winners or quick money most often make the recipient pay money before letting them proceed to the next step. So if an email with such alluring content lands in your mailbox, exercise caution.

Lack of customization

Because spam emails are sent in large volumes to random email addresses that are found on the internet, the spammer doesn't have sufficient details or the possibility to customize the email. If the email doesn't mention you by name or if the email content seems too random and out of context for you, it's possible that this was a bulk email sent to many others, too. So inspect the email content carefully and identify whether the email is spam.

Inconsistencies in the email

Some spam emails only intend to nudge the recipient to download an attachment or click on a link to view a product. With this intention, they sometimes lose sight of what they initially promised or mentioned in the email. Apart from inconsistencies with the language, there's sometimes no consistency between the email subject and the content within the email. When you spot such dissimilarities, it's usually a sign of trouble, and it's one of the indicators of a spam email.

Persistent call to action

The aim of spammers is to get a large volume of people to view a product, direct traffic towards a website, or get them to sign up for a scheme. To achieve this, they make the offer or their promises sound time-sensitive. They create a sense of urgency and nudge users to take the intended action. If the email claims that the action has to be taken urgently, the reason could be to ensure that the recipient doesn't have a lot of time to think about the email. This is done with the hope that the recipient simply skims over the email, failing to notice signs that the email is spam. If the email nudges you to perform an immediate action, proceed with caution.

Handling spam emails

Spam emails are a common nuisance to anyone with an email address. Though these emails seem unavoidable, you can take a few simple measures to ensure that your inbox is free of these pesky emails.

1. When you identify a spam email, report it as spam. Your email provider will ensure that future emails from a similar sender or those in the same context are appropriately filtered.

2. If a spam email lands in your mailbox, make sure that you don't interact with it. While most of these emails are harmless, it's possible that some might have malicious behavior built into them. Any interaction, such as replying to the email, downloading an attachment, or clicking on a link in the email, could lead to trouble.

3. Ensure that you're subscribed only to products or websites that you want to hear from periodically.

4. Don't enter your email address in public subscription lists or gated content on the internet unless you're sure that the brand encrypts and stores your email address following safe practices.

5. Use an email security solution to give your emails an added layer of security and make sure only the legitimate emails land in your mailbox.

Wrapping up

eProtect is a cloud-based email security and archiving solution that provides an additional layer of security for email accounts. The solution offers spam protection and other advanced threat detection mechanisms that can secure on-premise and cloud email accounts from evolving email threats. eProtect is the security solution powering Zoho Mail, a platform trusted by millions of users.