I occasionally check my spam box in the unlikely event that the spam filter has placed something there by mistake.
Today, I saw what I thought was a spam filter mistake and started to open it. A message popped up. “Be careful with this message. Our systems couldn’t verify that this message was really sent by verizonwireless.com. You might want to avoid clicking links or replying with personal information.” Below this was the incoming message in preview mode. It appeared to be the usual notification of my upcoming cellphone bill — except the amount I owed was listed as 2905.01!
Now if I had received that email in my inbox without any warnings, would I have clicked on a link within it to contest the amount? That is what the sender is hoping for. My actual bill is less than one tenth of that amount which I verified by logging in to my verizon account.
The spam filter continues to explain that “Spammers can forge a message to make it look like it’s sent by a real website or company that you might trust. To help protect you from such messages, we try to verify the real sender using email authentication.”
A review of the 26 emails within my spam box found 4 which could not be verified as coming from it’s listed source.
Be careful with your email.. It is a sneaky world out there!
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