Phishing emails and SMS messages often impersonate legitimate sources such as the Australian Taxation Office, or a common fraud source - a troubled Nigerian Prince asking us to "Please click here to access your $20 million gift from a Nigerian Prince." Or have you received a message "from the federal police", who have apparently issued a warrant for your arrest. Surprisingly enough, email isn't one of the ways the Australian Federal Police issue arrest warrants!

A message that has no relevance to you, or asks you to click on an urgent link inside the message, or demands something from you, is usually a phishing expedition designed to scam you financially, or start a hacking event (the Defence against CyberAttacks course details this type of phishing further). There are plenty of courses available on the Internet on how to identify phishing emails and SMS's. Clearstone's Scams and Phishing training course fills out further details on Phishing and Scams.

In the meantime, let's quickly introduce the acronym SLAM which is a series of points guide you through an assessment of emails and messages for their dodgyness. SLAM stands for:

Sender - who is the sender of the email. If it says Paypal, does the email address match other Paypal messages you've received previously or is there a misspelling, punctuation marks or something else included as part of the email address (like ppaypal.xy)?
Links - does the email ask you to click a link? The link could be to change a password, restore access to email, banking or some other service, or ask you to log in to an account to fix something? These are all dodgy and should be avoided.
Attachments - Does the email have an attachment? Do not open an attachment to find out what the message is about. Attachments from unknown sources are to be handled carefully and should be treated with suspicion
Message - Are there spelling or grammar errors in the email? Does the tone of the email match what you expect from the sender? These factors should be considered when deciphering an email's legitimacy.

If any one of the SLAM analysis steps suggests something is off about the email, start investigating further! The free Scams and Phishing course builds on this skill.

How to Spot Phishing

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