How to spot an email scam

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Scam emails affect everyone and they are not always straightforward to identify. If you receive a suspicious email, use our handy checklist to determine if it’s a real email or a scam.

1: Does the suspicious email request your password?

Nobody else needs to know your password but you. SkyMesh and other technical support don’t need your password to help you. The best way to keep your passwords safe is to refuse to share them. If someone asks for your password, it’s a scam.

2: Does the email ask you to log on to a new website to confirm your personal details, or to update your payment information?

If you were to receive an email from your bank asking you to log into their website to update your details or call their hotline on a specific number, search for your bank’s website via Google and check their hotline number matches the email. If it doesn’t, it may be a scam so call your bank website number to check.

The only way to update your personal details is through the My SkyMesh customer portal and the address for My SkyMesh is https://my.skymesh.net.au. You can also call our Customer Support hotline on 1300 759 637 to speak with a team member.

If you receive a suspicious email that uses a different website, or phone number, that means it’s a fake. These scams are designed to lure you to a cleverly-designed ruse that looks like a ‘real’ site.

3: Does the email come from a suspicious address?

The SkyMesh teams send emails to customers from the skymesh.com.au and skymesh.net.au domains. We also send important updates and offers from our skymesh.biz domain. All legitimate emails from SkyMesh come from those domains. In other words, if it’s not on that list it means the email is a scam. The scammer is also probably going to ask you to go somewhere and enter your password, which is doubly a scam.

If you ever get a message that you know is a scam: you can mark it as ‘junk’, then continue on with your day. We don’t recommend replying to scammers. In fact, if you do you might encourage the scammer to send you more emails.

We do recommend downloading a spam filtering program to your computer. Spam filtering is a feature of modern email clients like Windows Live Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird. Your spam filter should be enabled. You can adjust the settings to make it more stringent or tell the filter to delete junk mail as soon as it is detected.

If you’re not using a client with a spam filter built in, you may want to try downloading and installing a free one, such as SPAMFighter. You can configure SPAMFighter to block emails from suspicious email domains. You can also confirm the kind of emails you do want to receive by whitelisting them.

4: Does the suspicious email ask you to download an attachment with no explanation of what that attachment is?

It’s possible to disguise malicious software as an attachment to an email, and if you open a file that came with a suspicious email, it can do horrible things to your computer. For example, it might give a scammer access to your machine, and from there they can access your personal information or deny you access to your computer.

In short, if it’s not from a trusted address, don’t open it.

If you receive an email that doesn’t ‘seem right’, run those messages past the Skymesh Support team. Just send a copy of the email to our friendly Support inbox. We’ll use our finely-honed spam sensors to give you peace of mind. On the other hand, if you know it’s spam already, you can just throw it out.