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What is a sender of unsolicited emails?

The sender of unsolicited emails (or suspicious sender or black hat sender) is a sender that sends emails to recipients who haven’t permitted them to do so.

Although not all suspicious activity is intentional, even if the recipients give permission, a sender who sends too many emails may be flagged as a spammer.

How to identify suspicious emails?

In recent years, phishing has evolved a lot. Before, it was easy to recognize suspicious emails by their obvious spelling mistakes, exaggerated requests, or threats. Nowadays, phishing emails include personalized demands and/or known contacts of the attacked person.

1. Check the source

If you don’t know the sender, ask yourself does this person/company exist? If the sender looks familiar, but something is different, that should be your warning sign.

2. Check the subject

Always be careful of links in subject lines. If they are not bad promotions or newsletters, they are likely spam.

3. Check the content

As for the content, if they ask for your personal information (including passwords, official documents, opening attachments, following links, filling up a form, etc.), you should think twice about why they are asking you to do so. The two main extensions used for phishing attacks are .exe and .hta.

When a link is available in the body or the subject line, check its URL before opening. If the website seems suspicious, access it from a search engine rather than following the link.

Be wary when opening any attachments or links.