Phishing
Spelling
mistakes
Spoofed mails often contain serious spelling mistakes which one
cannot expect from a professional service. For example, the bank's
name maybe spelled wrongly at a particular place or certain other
words maybe spelled wrongly. An example is "choise" for
"choice".
Images
Spoofed e-mail often contains images that are not real such as the
sign of a bank. This is so because the phisher has tried to
reproduce it using some software and hence an exact replica is
sometimes not possible. Such a mistake can be confirmed by a close
examination and comparison of the image in the mail and the real
mail.
The pictures are also of a lower quality because the pictures are
using JPEG.
Email
headers
E-Mail headers are another way to tell if a mail is spoof. E-mail
headers show where the e-mail originated hence revealing the
identity of the phisher.
So far, that's the only sure way of telling.
Here's how you tell for the different email services
provided.
Hotmail
Can't find this function in Windows Live Mail...
Yahoo! Mail
Gmail
Mail.com
Link addresses and IP
addresses
Such e-mails often contain links to websites where one needs to
enter his password in order to "verify his account". A closer look
on such links (called hyperlinks) would tell that they point to
strange websites which read something like
http://72.68.34.76/verify. If the mail was to be
from the bank, the website name would have been that of the
bank.
This is a common trick used.
Another trick is to misspell the company's name. For example,
instead of www.dbs.com, it becomes www.dsb.com
