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Recognize a Phishing or Scam Email

Today a client received an unsolicited email from Kelly Reed, a supposed Marketing Executive.

Now in general this email seems innocent enough, offering a list of interior designer contact information to a home renovation company.  Upon closer inspection there are clues that this isn’t from a legitimate person and/or company. 

In the highlighted areas above are clues.  The highlighted email address indicates a hooverscustom.com as the company URL.  Using a browser, review the Search Engine results for hooverscustom.com. What I found was that there was no website. Now this isn't unheard of for a small business, but in conjunction with the fact that no company name is given and then only Texas, USA in the signature block, it is even more suspicious.  Who just gives the state that they're in?

 What would happen if you were to reply to this email? Maybe nothing, but there is a myriad of opportunities here for potential scammers. More than likely someone, but probably not Kelly Reed, would respond with pricing to receive the list of interior designers or they might send you a fake "teaser" list of names that's actually going to install something nefarious.

 The take away here is when evaluating whether an unsolicited email is legitimate look at the following:
  • The name - this one has a fairly common first and last name. It would be difficult to verify someone named Kelly Reed in Texas, USA.
  • The email address domain - verify that it's registered or has a website. Hooverscustom.com has no website and was registered with a registrar in Panama less than 30 days prior to sending this email. 
  • What is the company name/brand? Usually a reputable company will tout their name brand and say check us out on social media, their website, etc. This is usually indicated in the email signature.
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