Skip to main content

How to spot phishing emails in Outlook?

Many people see phishing and junk emails as the same, but as a matter of the fact, although all phishing is considered junk or spam, but not all junk is phishing. The main difference between the two is in the intent of the sender. The sender of most junk emails aims at hawking products and services by sending unsolicited emails to bulk lists. While phishing is a scam which aims at tricking recipients into sharing sensitive data or infecting victims' systems with malware.


Spot phishing emails in Outlook with common signs

A phishing email can be dangerous for your personal information and money. To identify an email if it is phishing, please check if the message has any of the following common signs:

  • Inconsistencies in email addresses, links & domain names
    Phishing emails are usually disguised as official communication from legitimate senders a user may trust. You can check sender's actual address and the address on the "From" address if they match; Hover over the link that is embedded in the message, but don't click, to see if the domain names match as shown below. Note that a string of random letters of numbers usually doesn't look like a company's web address.
  • Request for credentials, payment information or other sensitive information
    Phishing emails are unsolicited and might provide a link or attachment and ask you to provide sensitive information. Remember that most companies will not send you emails asking for passwords, credit card information, or tax numbers, nor will they send you a link that require you to login.
  • Urgent calls to action or threats
    Phishing emails often claim that you must take immediate action to get a reward or avoid a penalty. Creating a false sense of urgency is a common tactic in phishing attacks and scams, so that you don't think too much or consult others.
  • Grammar errors and misspelled words
    Professional companies and organizations always make sure that the messages they deliver are high-quality and professional. If the email has obvious spelling or grammatical errors, it may be a scam.
  • Generic greeting
    Companies you deal with should know your name and usually call you by your name. Phishing emails typically use generic salutations such as "Dear Sir or Madam," or “Dear customer.” that's a warning sign that it's probably not your bank or shopping site.
  • Suspicious attachments
    The attachments included in unsolicited emails should be opened with caution. Typically, authentic institutions don’t randomly send you emails with attachments, but instead direct you to download documents or files on their own website.

If you see phishing emails, please do not ignore or delete the spam emails. Instead, report the junk and phishing emails to Microsoft to prevent this from happening in the future.


Spot malicious emails in Outlook with Check Malicious Emails option

Kutools for Outlook enables you to easily spot a malicious email by adding a Malicious mark to the beginning of the email subject as shown below. To get the malicious alert for your messages, please follow the steps below. Note that the Check Malicious Emails option relies on Kutools for Outlook, if you don’t have Kutools installed, click here to download and try with no limit for 60 days.

1. On Kutools tab, click on Options.

2. In the pop-up Options dialog box, switch to Security tab, check the Check malicious emails option, and then click on OK.

Note: You can add exceptions in the Check Malicious Exceptions dialog box as shown below by clicking on the Exceptions button if there are links in your email messages you never want Kutools for Outlook to mark as malicious.

From now on, if someone send you an email with suspicious links, you will see the [Malicious] mark before the email subject. Please double-check if it’s a phishing email with the common signs as shown in the first part of this tutorial. If so, report it to Microsoft to prevent this from happening in the future.


Related articles

How To Report Junk And Phishing Emails In Outlook?

You may notice that there are lots of spam or phishing emails passing through Microsoft’s filters, while some legitimate emails end up in your junk or spam folder. To help Microsoft improve the filters and prevent this from happening in the future, please do not ignore or delete the spam emails. Instead, report the junk and phishing emails to Microsoft with one of the methods listed below.

How To Block Or Unblock Senders In Outlook?

Sometimes, in Outlook, you may receive junk emails from some strangers which annoy you. In this article, I introduce the method to block or prevent receiving emails from some specific senders in Outlook.

How To Automatically Delete Spam Or Junk Emails In Outlook?

For those spam or junk emails, you may prefer to delete them automatically instead of keeping them in the Junk Email folder in Outlook. This article introduces two methods of deleting spam emails in Outlook.

How To Configure Junk E-Mail Filter Settings In Outlook?

Every day when we launch our Outlook, we always receive all kinds of disturbing advertisement mails which are called spam messages while receive useful information. We need to manually delete the spam one from the inbox. How to avoid receiving them? Fortunately, outlook provides us with the function of junk email filter which can filter the disturbing mails into the junk e-mail folder. Also, you can configure the junk e-mail settings according to your needs. Please look at the following instructions.

How To Mark An Email Message As Not Junk Or Spam In Outlook?

When you are using Outlook Junk E-mail filter function for filtering junk emails, you will find that sometimes the normal one is treated as spam and filtered to the Junk E-mail folder automatically. Based on that, you need to restore the mistake filtering one to the original folder which it was previously located. Dragging the junk email to the folder directly is not a good way because sometimes you are not sure which folder is the original folder of it. With this article, you will learn how to mark an email message as not junk and move it to the original folder automatically.

How To Prevent Email From Going To Junk In Outlook?

Sometimes, Outlook may treat normal emails as junk and filter them into the junk email folder automatically when messages arriving. It is annoying to keep browsing your junk email folder for normal emails when realizing that some emails are gone automatically from your inbox. Actually, Outlook provides you with some features to prevent email from going to junk folder. In this article, we will list several frequently use method for you to avoid email from going to junk in Outlook.


Best Office Productivity Tools

Kutools for Outlook - Over 100 Powerful Features to Supercharge Your Outlook

🤖 AI Mail Assistant: Instant pro emails with AI magic--one-click to genius replies, perfect tone, multilingual mastery. Transform emailing effortlessly! ...

📧 Email Automation: Out of Office (Available for POP and IMAP)  /  Schedule Send Emails  /  Auto CC/BCC by Rules When Sending Email  /  Auto Forward (Advanced Rules)   /  Auto Add Greeting   /  Automatically Split Multi-Recipient Emails into Individual Messages ...

📨 Email Management: Easily Recall Emails  /  Block Scam Emails by Subjects and Others  /  Delete Duplicate Emails  /  Advanced Search  /  Consolidate Folders ...

📁 Attachments ProBatch Save  /  Batch Detach  /  Batch Compress  /  Auto Save   /  Auto Detach  /  Auto Compress ...

🌟 Interface Magic: 😊More Pretty and Cool Emojis   /  Boost Your Outlook Productivity with Tabbed Views  /  Minimize Outlook Instead of Closing ...

👍 One-click Wonders: Reply All with Incoming Attachments  /   Anti-Phishing Emails  /  🕘Show Sender's Time Zone ...

👩🏼‍🤝‍👩🏻 Contacts & Calendar: Batch Add Contacts From Selected Emails  /  Split a Contact Group to Individual Groups  /  Remove Birthday Reminders ...

Over 100 Features Await Your Exploration! Click Here to Discover More.

Read More       Free Download      Purchase
 

 

Comments (0)
No ratings yet. Be the first to rate!
There are no comments posted here yet
Please leave your comments in English
Posting as Guest
×
Rate this post:
0   Characters
Suggested Locations