Email Spoofing Under Cyber Insurance

Things you need to know about Email spoofing

Email spoofing is when an email that appears to have been sent by a legitimate source, like a bank or credit card company, has in fact originated from a different source altogether. In simple terms, email spoofing is the creation of emails with a fake senders address.  

It is one of the major internet threats the world faces today. According to a report by Verizon, email fraud is accountable for almost 90% of data breaches.

How is Email spoofing possible?

This is possible as the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) does not have any tool to authenticate the sender’s address. Some email address authentication procedures and tools have been developed to tackle the email spoofing threat. However, these tools are not advanced enough to solve the threat.

Reasons why Email spoofing is done-

There are many reasons for spoofing sender’s address, here are some-

 Hiding the true identity of the sender- This can be done to commit fraud so that the recipient cannot track the origin of the email.

To Avoid spam blacklists- Many spammers are blacklisted easily. Hence, they keep switching their email address to avoid getting blacklisted.

To pretend to be someone else- The sender tries to be someone that the recipient knows to obtain confidential data or to access personal possessions.

How to be safe from email spoofing?

If you have received an email that looks fishy then you should delete it.

If the email is from your bank/ institution and you are asked to change your password or other personal information then you should get in touch with your bank/institution and confirm the same. There is a high possibility that the email is fake.

You should never click on any hyperlinks received on your email. You can type them in your web browser manually. 

Buy a cyber insurance policy to secure yourself from all kinds of digital threats.

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