Our inboxes and daily lives are constantly filled with digital communications and emails that require careful deciphering to avoid spam, dangerous links, and potential risks to our personal information and safety. It is important to take the time to carefully sift through emails and their corresponding content so we are not accidentally making ourselves vulnerable to hackers and their harmful intentions. The following are a few tips and tricks to quickly help spot the good emails from the bad emails.

Good Emails

• Email address is familiar, the address can be found in your contacts list, in your school or work domain, or is easily recognizable as someone you know.
• After a quick online search, the email address is easily connected to a reputable and well known business that you personally interact with.
• Email content does not request or demand personal or financial information.
• Email specifically pertains to your professional or personal pursuits and conversations.
• Email has a clear subject line and contains information that makes sense to your everyday life.
• Email addresses you personally and references a specific item or task that makes sense to you.

Bad Emails

• Email address is not familiar, it is not easily recognized, and the address itself may contain unusual characters or slight variations to a well known business email address.
• Email content makes direct requests for personal or financial information.
• Email offers an incentive or money for completing a particular task. If it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is.
• Email contains unknown links, or links that are designed to collect personal information such as address, phone number, social media accounts, passwords, etc.
• Email does not contain any salutations, or contain any indicators that they personally know you.