What is Email Spoofing

Email scam is a predominant part of the cybercrime domain—almost hundreds of users being targeted every day with a broad range of email spoofing attacks.

To keep pointing you in the right direction, let us explain to you the stats briefly. Many fraudulent emails appear to come from a legitimate source. Over 300 billion emails are delivered every day, among which 3 to 6 billion emails are scams. According to an online source, 65% of USA organizations fall victim to email spoofing scams.

Now, the question that turns out is why we need to prevent email spoofing?

To answer this question, you first need to understand the core premise behind email spoofing attacks.

What is Email Spoofing?

Email spoofing is the process of delivering an email with a forged sender address. It’s a technique that misguides the origin of the message. Email spoofing has other names like domain spoof or direct spoof. It tricks people into believing that the email they received is from a legitimate source.

When protecting against email spoofing, employing an advanced email verification API can prove instrumental. It provides a safeguard by validating sender addresses, ensuring messages are genuinely from the alleged authors thus minimizing the risk of spoofing. Such outgoing message servers are unable to direct users about the authenticity of a sender address.

The main reason to target users via email spoofing is to take them in confidence and ask for confidential details like banking information, such as credit card PIN and other sensitive information.

Once hackers succeed in stealing your sensitive passcodes, they can easily draw money from your account.

In other scenarios, by accessing your company’s core accounts, hackers can publicly share sensitive details and use your identity for erroneous acts to tarnish your market reputation.

The dangers of email spoofing vary, depending on the purpose for which you get spoofed. Below, you can find some of the most usual email spoofing dangers or risks.

What Risks Are Associated with Email Spoofing Threats?

As outlined above, email spoofing attacks are designed mainly for two purposes. One is to steal a user’s account money, and the other is to ruin an organization’s reputation. Nevertheless, the attack may have some other threats as well. Find the risks associated with email spoofing below:

1. Identity Theft

Hackers can send you fake emails to trick you into giving up your personally identifiable information (PII). With that information, hackers pretend to be you and use your email account for several unlawful activities. Identity theft could be very risky. Cybercriminals can misuse your identity and may take bank loans using your information. It will end up being debted since all of the loans taken are unpaid in your name.

2. Spreading Malware

Spreading malware is one of the most common purposes of email spoofing. By clicking on a malicious email, users end up installing malware in their system. Sometimes a user redirects to a malicious website where a device gets hacked.

Malware such as Ransomware is dangerous; it locks your device until you pay for the restoration. Therefore, it is always suggested to use updated antivirus software to prevent such risks.

3. Theft of Trade Secret

With the help of email spoofing, cybercriminals also throw other attacks like man-in-the-middle attacks to steal your organization’s trade secret. Not only that, it also may lead to corporate espionage activities.

How to Avoid Email Spoofing?

Is there any way to detect a fake email? Unfortunately! There’s none. For example, if a scammer sends you an email by impersonating your bank, you can’t find it. Similarly, a common user cannot differentiate that an email is actually coming from trusted sources or someone is faking it.

Therefore, to avoid email spoofing, you need to be vigilant. I will show you how to avert email spoofing plus; you will also know what software you can install to keep your network well-protected.

Here are the telltale signs of a spoofed email:

• Ignore emails that create a sense of urgency and directs you to follow or click on links.
• Don’t just see the sender field and display name. Check spelling and content tone to figure out if the source is legitimate.
• Check spelling errors in the URLs.
• Never open links or attachments that ask you to log in.

How to Stop Email Spoofing?

The best way to stop email spoofing threats is to deploy certain frameworks. I am showing you a list of the best frameworks to combat email spoofing tricks:

1. Sender Policy Framework

SPF is an email authentication method that aids companies in verifying sender address. You have to publish the SPF record in DNS. This record contains the list of the IP addresses which are allowed to send emails on your behalf. Employing an SPF record checker can help you efficiently analyze and confirm the validity of these authorized IP addresses

2. Domain Key Identified Mail

DKIM also needs you to update a DNS record just like you did in SPF. In DKIM, a digital signature is required for the header of the email message. The organization’s DNS record then verifies the signature. DKIM signatures are encrypted and can’t be seen by end-users. Moreover, this authentication method also helps companies verify anything altered in the email attachments.

3. Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance

DMARC is another email authentication protocol. It ensures domain owners that their emails are secure. DMARC delivers an email only when it adheres to all the domain owner’s instructions in their DNS record.

DMARC protocol should be enabled as it helps emails against phishing and spoofing. If an email is fake or doesn’t follow listed instructions, it gets rejected by the receiving email server.

How iProVPN Prevents Email Spoofing?

iProVPN uses a robust 256-bit AES encryption protocol that prevents phishing attacks by encrypting communication, thus preventing Man-in-the-Middle attacks that redirect you to fake pages.

It is suggested to always turn on your email authentication protocols and antivirus software to completely filter out spam from your email.

Conclusion

Remember, hackers never let an opportunity go to waste. They always find security holes to disrupt your security infrastructure. You can stop those culprits from exploiting your domain by implementing standard email authentication methods. Moreover, regularly update your antivirus software and connect VPN before initializing any crucial business communication.