Orange Arrow – Always pay attention to the sender’s email address for misspellings or addresses that do not look correct. In this case, the sender’s address office365@eml.net is definitely not an address you would expect to receive from Microsoft.
Yellow Arrow – When an email is labeled BULK, either your company’s spam filter, or a filter on the way to you, has marked the email as potential spam. Be sure you know who you are expecting emails from and read with caution.
Dark Red Arrow – If you receive emails that are not directed to your IT department or person in charge of IT purchasing, chances are you would not be renewing or activating software. An easy way to double-check this part of the email is to stop and think, “would the sender address me Client, User, or something else generic?” If you have an actual account, the sender will know your name at the very least.
You also see the sentence “Your Office365 access needs to be activated Login Your Email here To activate.” This sentence is full of incorrect capitalizations, missing punctuation, and poor grammar, making it highly suspicious.
Red Arrow – When receiving login requests via email, it is always a best practice to verify in several ways. First, if you hover the mouse pointer over the link but do not click on it, it will show you where the link is taking you in the lower left of your browser or email client. If that link looks incorrect, do not go there. Second, if a vendor or other entity you have an account with is asking you to log in via email, it is best to go directly to the vendor site and log in there. Any issues they have with your account will be noted once you are logged into your true account. Although it might take slightly longer, it is safer to just go to the vendor site in question and log in there to be sure.
Green Arrow – The last issue with this email is looking for inconsistencies, misspellings, improper characters or formats. At any place in the email, if you see letters being capitalized that should not be, or something that appears to be a slight typo or a number in place of a letter, odds are that someone is trying to appear as a legitimate sender but is not. The giveaway in this section, by the green arrow, is the copyright mark and its placement. The way “Outlook Office (c)2019” is formatted - especially using (c) instead of the © symbol – is not what you would expect to see from a professional organization.
For more information, visit Network Security.
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