All You Need to Know About Email Security Threats and How to Protect Against Them

As much as many of us would like to maintain a clean mailbox with only relevant and expected messages, this is a rarity nowadays. Most regular email users have to frequently filter mail by relevant and unsolicited, by helpful and malicious. The list of email security threats connected to email grows every day, and only by keeping track of the most common threats can you make the biggest breakthroughs in securing your mailbox.

1. Phishing

If you receive a strange email from a seemingly well-known person or organization asking for confidential details (like login information, bank account numbers, and PIN codes), being suspicious is a natural reaction. Indeed, phishing actors try to gain your trust through impersonation, but the way the scheme works will not always be as obvious as described above.

Very often, email users only receive the request to fill in the confidential details after clicking on a link or opening a file. These malicious interfaces can very accurately mirror real services and webpages, like online banking portals and even the login page of your email. More advanced forms of phishing may target you specifically (as opposed to a mass mailing), or a high-ranking employee at your company.

One way to protect sensitive information is to always send it within a password-protected email, and only disclose the password to your intended recipient. That way, your recipient will know the email is not from you if it is not protected with the password you have selected.

2. Common scams

Although the main idea behind phishing is to prey upon people’s trust and inattentiveness, scams are an entirely different breed of threat. Here, the main idea is to dangle a reward in front of somebody and prey upon their greed and gullibility.

Many email scams promise to make the person rich, with various creative stories behind the offer. For instance, it might be an obscure but promising investment, a dream job that pays big bucks for seemingly doing nothing, or a promise for a quick payout if the user does something quick like complete a survey or spin a wheel.

It should also be mentioned that some scams rely on fear, accusing users of wrongdoing to coerce them into foolish financial decisions. But these scams have much in common with phishing, so it is hard to draw a distinction.

3. Miscellaneous malware

Though they are the poster child of digital infection and by all rights commonplace, viruses are hardly the only type of malware you can be exposed to via email. Since many mail providers have implemented malware scanning solutions that analyze files in emails, hackers have often turned to web pages hosting malware as the main source of infection. The user traditionally reaches these pages via links, that may be manipulated to look like legitimate websites until the URL is checked. Other threats of this type include worms, spyware, Trojans, and ransomware.

4. Mailing lists

For an individual, getting subscribed to an unsolicited mailing list can cause all sorts of issues, from countless spam emails filling up their mailbox to targeted attacks based on their interests. If you find yourself in this situation and the mailing list was created by an unknown person, it may be impossible to unsubscribe. However, you should be able to add any offending messages and addresses to your block list.