So, how does one know which email is suspicious and which one isn’t. While there are a number of tips that can make up quite a list, here are three that can prevent you from getting scammed:

#1: Addressed as “Dear Customer”

If you see an email titled ‘Dear Customer’ that asks you to follow a link so as to fill in account details, you can be sure it is a phishing scam. This is because spammers use this old feature known as mail merge when sending emails out to victims that automatically fills in customer names among other types of information. But this is not to say that any authentic emails sent from corporations to you won’t use your name when addressing you.

#2: Links look suspicious

If you’re not sure about an email, hover the mouse over any link that is found in the email but don’t, under any circumstances, click it. When you look at the lower left-hand corner of your browser or email client, you’ll find the exact address that you’re hovering over.

You can easily determine whether that email is a scam or not by reading the link until the first backslash. Now, go back from that point to the first period and you’ll see the address that you are actually heading towards. In most cases, it will not be the URL that it looks like at the beginning of the link.

#3: Contains an attachment

If they can’t get you to follow a link, the next thing is to send you an attachment. For this, make sure that you never download an attachment that you don’t expect from anyone. In some cases, you may be expecting some people to send you some attachments. Use discretion when trying to do so.