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Spot a phishing email before you click

Modern phishing has no spelling mistakes and copies the real branding pixel for pixel. You beat it on process, not on how convincing the message looks.

  • DifficultyEasy
  • Time10 min
  • RiskLow
  • ReversibleYes
  • PlatformAny
  • Updated

Written and tested by emdottech

What that means

Low risk. This fix only checks things, or changes settings you can switch back in the same place. This change is reversible — you can return to the previous state without professional help or data loss.

Five phishing tells in order — reading the real domain rather than the display name, hovering links to see where they truly go, treating urgency as the alarm bell, acting outside the message by typing it yourself, and never opening unexpected attachments

Steps

How to verify the fix

You can read the sender's real domain, hover-check a link's destination, and verify notices by typing the address yourself.

If this didn't fix it

You're unsure whether an email is genuine — don't act from inside it; open a new tab, type the site yourself, and check there.

Next stop: the related fixes below, or start a guided diagnosis.

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