The easiest way to tell if an email is real is by looking at the name and email address.

The first 2 clues that you might find in a spam email:

• The email address doesn’t match the name of the person or company that’s supposed to be sending the email
• The email address has a lot of random numbers, letters, and symbols

Here are two emails from retail stores. One is real and the other is a spam email.
Can you tell which one is real?

Click the box next to any of the spam email clues you see in this email.

Click the box next to any of the spam email clues you see in this email.

Other signs of spam email

Here are some other clues you might find in a spam email:

• You weren’t expecting an email from the sender
• Sometimes your email account will block certain things in the email. For example, it may block images. If your email account blocks any part of the email, you’ll see a message saying Show blocked content at the top.
• When something seems too good to be true, like winning a big prize, it probably is too good to be true
• Any email you weren’t expecting that tries to get you to do a survey and promises a reward is probably spam

Let’s look at another example

Below are two emails that say they’re from Starbucks. One of them is actually from Starbucks, and one of them is a fake.
Can you tell which one is real?

Click the box next to any of the spam email clues you see in this email.

Click the box next to any of the spam email clues you see in this email.

What to do with spam emails

If you get an email and you think it’s spam, don’t reply to it. You can click Report as Spam so your email server can block future emails from this address. Most importantly, delete the email.

Links in emails

If you get an email like the first Starbucks email and you remember signing up for it, then it’s OK to click on the link.

If you think an email is spam, don’t click any links. The links might be dangerous.

If you do accidentally click on any links on a fake email, your computer should warn you that links can be dangerous and might give a virus to your computer. If you ever get this message, make sure to click on Back on the internet browser.

We’re done!

Let’s see what you’ve learned. Do you think you can do these things by yourself?
Can you...

Identify a spam email?

Identify a real email?

For more information about spam emails, you can visit this Government of Canada Get Cyber Safe webpage.

To learn more about spam emails from banks, try the Banking Basics course on Bridge The Digital Divide Hub.