Phishing emails are typically disguised as official correspondence from reputable senders, such as banks, online payment processors, government organisations, or institutions that a user may trust.
These emails usually drive users to a spoof version of a legitimate company’s website. They are asked to submit personal information such as login passwords or credit card numbers, which may be used to steal the victim’s money or identity.
Phishing emails are more complex than standard spam emails, often mass-mailed, have a monetary goal, and don’t need the spammer to have extensive technological knowledge.
Antispam legislation
Other nations and political bodies, in addition to the United States CAN-SPAM Act, have enacted legislation to combat the spam problem, including the following:
Spam Act of 2003 in Australia
Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations in the United Kingdom
Antispam law in Canada
Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive of the European Union, 2002
How to Deal with Spam
Many spam communications are caught by email spam filters, which may be part of a security application or an email system add-on. They are deposited in a user’s spam folder rather than their inbox. Spam cannot, however, be entirely eradicated. Some modern filters can scan photos and detect text inside them. However, this might result in nonspam emails being filtered out mistakenly.
Users may, however, limit their susceptibility to spam emails by doing the following:
Spam communications — or any suspicious-looking messages — that come in their inboxes are reported, blocked, and deleted;
installing an antispam filter from a third-party on local email clients;
modifying the filter to prevent messages that include specific terms or phrases that regularly appear in spam emails;
building an email allowlist of particular email addresses, IP addresses, or domains from which the user is willing to receive email;
For online use, such as in forums, use a throwaway email account or a disguised email address; and never click on links or open attachments in emails from unknown senders.
Legitimate senders can avoid being mistaken for spam by taking the following steps:
preserving their sender reputation; employing authentication tools such as DomainKeys Identified Mail and Sender Policy Framework; eliminating terms that might be identified as spam by antispam filters;
providing information that is both relevant and user-friendly;
They are using a reputable bulk email provider, optimising email deliverability with strong subject lines, encouraging users to opt in to guarantee that they are engaged and less likely to flag the email as spam, and optimising email deliverability with good subject lines.