Scammers usually write on behalf of a well-known organisation or company (e.g. utility provider, bank, credit card provider, police, post office, other service providers), but they may also pose as distant millionaires, legal representatives of unknown relatives or other individuals. Often they try to get you to act immediately, otherwise you will face some kind of "negative consequence" (e.g. "update your details immediately" or "your account will be locked shortly if you do not log in").
Examples include:
- Suspicious activity has been detected on one of your user accounts, quickly update/confirm your details via the link provided before the account falls into unauthorised hands
- Update your billing details for a service, otherwise it will be immediately blocked.
- Police action has been taken, respond immediately to the email address provided or a wanted or arrest warrant will be issued.
- Immediately pay any charges associated with a package in transit, or it will be returned or withheld.
- Payment of the attached (unknown) invoice has expired, the service will be blocked soon
You may receive an inheritance, free product, other unexpected cash.
Most often, you have to click on some link in these emails, which then takes you to a fake login, payment or virus page. The text of the link may often appear to be genuine, but hovering the cursor over it reveals that it actually leads to a suspicious website.
These emails, or fraudulent websites, are often visually indistinguishable from the original companies, using logos and colour palettes. Be careful, because good looks do not mean reliability!
It is worth checking the sender's email address. Legitimate organisations will typically not send a message with a public domain (e.g. @gmail.com) sender ending. If the domain name (the part after the @ symbol) matches the apparent sender of the email, the message is most likely from the sender, whereas if you see a gmail or other unidentifiable domain, you should be cautious. Fake websites also have suspicious domains, often not matching the name of the organisation. There may be small mistakes or extra letters in the email address, so be aware of these too!
Phishing emails can also come from hacked accounts of our own correspondents. Check if this is how your friend would actually phrase it, if they would ask you to do something like this, ask about the message in another channel or on a call.
In the past, phishing emails were very common, with a lot of spelling mistakes, but nowadays more and more of them are written in a plausible way. The form of address in these letters is almost always generic, with the recipient not being identified by name in the body of the letter (e.g. "Dear Customer" or "Dear User").