Spoofing is a form of phishing where the goal is to pretend to be someone who you trust in order to get you to do something you wouldn’t normally do/would do as a request of this person.
Here is an example of a spoofing email.
Hazards
Email is addressed as ‘Dean Jenkins’
While Dean is the CEO of the company, we can see here that the email address listed next to his name is not from Dean.
Lack of grammar and punctuation
The sentence in the email is missing grammar such as full stops missing.
Lack of common signature
This isn’t always true as spoofing emails today are getting more complex to tell. Have a look if this signature is abnormal for the person in question.
How to prevent attacks from these emails
- If it looks abnormal or out of the ordinary for a request, delete it.
- If you are unsure, call the person and ask to confirm.
- Look at the email address, if it not normal or you don’t recognise it, delete it.