You’ve got mail

Email has become one of the ways of introducing phishing attacks, where a malicious agent assumes the identity of a trusted institution to extract information or direct the user to false-looking web pages. These attacks also extend to other communication channels such as advertising slots or ads in Ads engines.

Therefore, the user should be especially careful with unexpected emails, even personalized ones, and not click on links or enter personal data without verifying the origin. In the browser address bar, one should also check if the URL corresponds to the domain of the intended site, with valid security certificates issued by the entity responsible.

.pdf attachments and image files are the most secure. The user should also pay attention to any attachment that requires the installation or execution of software or code.

From the start, we should be suspicious of any type of unexpected email, even if it is personalized and comes from reliable institutions that seem to want to help us with something, leading us to enter personal data or download software.

In sum, the sender’s information in the email does not offer any guarantee of the origin, being necessary to be careful with unexpected emails and verify the origin of the sites and attachments before sharing information or installing any software.