A common method that spammers use to appear as legitimate mail is to set their display name to something different and misleading from the actual address they are sending from. For instance, they might send a fake invoice from "bigattack@bigscam.ru" but set their display name to claim they are "PayPal Customer Service", in order to trick the user into thinking the mail is from PayPal.
These messages can be hard to identify as illegitimate when using Outlook, because by default Outlook only displays the display name (or contact name if the sender is in your contacts list) and does not display the actual email address.
Here is how to set up Outlook to display the email address, to help identify these fraudulent mails:
- Open Outlook and select your Inbox from the column on the left by clicking on it.
- At the top of the window, click on the "View" tab
- Find "Add Columns" in the ribbon across the top and click on it
- Click "New Column"
- Fill in all fields:
- Name: Choose a name you will recognize, for instance "Force email"
- Type: Choose "Formula"
- Formula: Copy and paste this formula into the field:
- IIf(InStr([SearchFromEmail], "@") = 0, "", right([SearchFromEmail],len([SearchFromEmail])))
- In the "Show these columns in this order:" section, move the newly created column up the list to right after "From"
- Click "OK" to save
You will now see the senders actual email address, as well as their display name, on emails in your inbox. Watch out for mails that claim to be from a business, but do not come from that business's domain (the domain is the part after the @ symbol), and be cautious with any mail that references a contract or invoice that you do not recall agreeing to.
If you're not sure if a mail is spam or not, we are happy to help! You can contact us using any of the methods on this page: https://www.prxy.com/contact.php
