Phishing is an attempt to steal sensitive information by pretending to be a trusted person, company, or organization. Attackers commonly use emails to persuade recipients to provide login credentials, passwords, financial information, or other confidential data.
How Does Email Phishing Work?
A phishing email is made to look like a legitimate message from a person or organization the recipient recognizes. The attacker may imitate the sender's name, use a domain that resembles a legitimate one, or create a message that appears to require immediate attention.
For example, an attacker may send an email that appears to come from a bank and claims that the recipient's account requires verification. The message directs the recipient to a website that looks like the bank's legitimate login page. Any credentials entered on the fraudulent page can then be captured by the attacker.
Attackers use several techniques to make phishing emails appear legitimate, including sender impersonation, domain spoofing, deceptive links, fake websites, and convincing message content.
Common Signs of a Phishing Email
A phishing email may contain several signs that warrant closer examination:
- Unfamiliar or misleading sender address: The address may use a domain unrelated to the organization named in the message or a domain designed to resemble a legitimate one.
- Requests for sensitive information: The message asks for passwords, payment details, account credentials, or other confidential information.
- Urgent requests: The sender creates pressure by claiming that an account will be suspended, a payment is overdue, or immediate action is required.
- Deceptive links: The text of a link may appear legitimate while the actual destination leads to a different website.
- Unexpected attachments: The message includes a file that the recipient was not expecting.
These characteristics do not automatically confirm that a message is phishing. The sender address, domain , links, attachments, and context should be reviewed together.
Phishing vs. Spam
Spam and phishing are related but describe different types of email.
Spam refers to unsolicited messages sent to recipients who did not request them. These messages are often promotional or commercial and may be distributed to large mailing lists.
Phishing involves an attempt to deceive the recipient into disclosing sensitive information. A phishing message may therefore arrive as unsolicited email, but its defining characteristic is the attempt to obtain information through deception.
For example, an unsolicited promotional message is spam, while a message impersonating a bank and requesting account credentials is phishing.