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Trump officials and Law & Orderyers keep falling for a basic email prank - here's how to avoid getting scammed by a stranger
Trump officials and lawyers keep falling for a basic email prank - here's how to avoid getting scammed by a stranger

Trump officials and lawyers keep falling for a basic email prank - here's how to avoid getting scammed by a stranger

As an extra level of precaution, add important people to your contacts. It's not foolproof — in Gmail at least, people you email with often get automatically added — but it's another quick way to tell if it's someone you know. If the sender is already in your contacts, you'll be able to view their contact info by hovering over their name.

It's also worth taking a closer look at the email address. Sometimes scammers can subtly change one or two characters in an address that will trick the eye into thinking it looks correct. Swapping an "m" with an "rn," for instance, is hard to notice at a quick glance.

Finding out the sender can be slightly trickier on mobile: Open the message, click on the sender's name, and you'll be taken to their contact card. There, you'll be able to see the entire email address.

Note: I use an email app called Email by Edison Mail, so it won't look the same on every app. But the process should be approximately the same on all major smartphone email clients.

To find out more information, click on the small arrow under the display name. There, you'll see the full address along with the domain it originated from.

If you're not convinced the message is legitimate, it's worth comparing it against previous messages from the same sender. Look for changes to the display name or the email signature.

If anything looks fishy to you, don't respond — just mark as spam or delete the message entirely.

The first and most obvious step is to find out the person's email address. In most popular email clients, there's an easy way to do that, but it's super-simple in Gmail: Just hover your cursor over the sender's name, and a box will pop up that reveals their full email address. This works both in your inbox and once you've opened a message.

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Trump officials and lawyers keep falling for a basic email prank - here's how to avoid getting scammed by a stranger

It's also worth taking a closer look at the email address. Sometimes scammers can subtly change one or two characters in an address that will trick the eye into thinking it looks correct. Swapping an "m" with an "rn," for instance, is hard to notice at a quick glance.

Finding out the sender can be slightly trickier on mobile: Open the message, click on the sender's name, and you'll be taken to their contact card. There, you'll be able to see the entire email address.

To find out more information, click on the small arrow under the display name. There, you'll see the full address along with the domain it originated from.

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