How to Identify Fake and Spam Email

Ways to identify is an e-mail is spam. E-mail spam can junk up your inbox and opened spam messages can potentially infect your computer with viruses, spyware, or malware. In addition some spam messages may appear to be from a legitimate person or company but instead be an attempt to obtain financial or personal information from you. There are a few things you can look for to determine if the e-mail is spam.

If you don't recognize the sender name or e-mail address there is a good chance it may be spam. If you do click on the message and your e-mail service indicates the message may be harmful or comes from an unknown sender the chance of spam is high.

If the e-mail address at first glance looks like it is from a legit address such as a friend, bank, credit card issuer, or company you may want to look closer. Subtle differences in the e-mail address such as misspellings off by one letter, zeros changed to the letter O or ones changed to the letter I (or the reverse), or odd e-mail client domains can be an indication of a spam email.

The e-mail appears to be unsolicited. If you don't usually receive emails from the service or person that the e-mail claims to be from there is a good chance to e-mail is a fake.

Misspellings in the subject heading or misspellings in the body of the message including poor sentence structure may be a warning sign that the e-mail is not from who it appears to be from.

In addition to keeping a keen eye for these subtle clues you can protect yourself from spam e-mails such as scams and viruses. Make sure your e-mail settings for junk e-mail are set up to filter out known spam and messages that aren't recognized.

Never click on a link within a suspicious e-mail, never reply with information such as account numbers, passwords, or personal information as most financial and secure website services never ask for the information via e-mail. Do not download or open any file attachments either as they can contain some sort of virus or spyware.

If you get e-mails that are clearly fakes of trusted financial or other secure websites consider contacting the website or company to make them aware of the fraudulent e-mails being sent in their name.