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What should you do if you receive a suspicious looking e mail with an attachment?
If you suspect that an email or text message you received is a phishing attempt:
- Do not open it.
- Delete it immediately to prevent yourself from accidentally opening the message in the future.
- Do not download any attachments accompanying the message.
- Never click links that appear in the message.
Is it safe to open a suspicious email?
When you get a suspected phishing email, don’t panic. It’s perfectly safe to open an email (and use the preview panel). Mail clients haven’t allowed code to run when you open (or preview) an email for a decade or more. Phishing emails are a genuine security risk, though.
What action is required when you have received a suspicious email?
You may just have a hunch. If you are suspicious, you should report it. Your report of a phishing email will help us to act quickly, protecting many more people from being affected. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) will analyse the suspect email and any websites it links to.
How can I tell if an email attachment is malicious?
When looking at an email attachment you should first consider its extension. The extension can help tell you the file type of the attachment. For instance, if your file ends with .jpg it’s an image. If it’s .avi it’s a video. One extension you should usually avoid is .exe, which will execute an installation and that program may be malicious.
How to safely inspect a suspicious email address?
The simplest approach would be to use direct HTTP access to save the file and open it in Notepad to examine the contents. The file can’t magically run itself if you treat it directly as data and you should be able to examine the contents.
What should I avoid in an email attachment?
One extension you should usually avoid is .exe, which will execute an installation and that program may be malicious. While most email service providers block these files, they can sometimes slip through. A few other extensions to avoid include .jar, .cpl, .com, .bat, .msi, .js, .wsf, and so many more.
What to do about unsolicited email attachments?
Unsolicited Email/Strange “From” Field: don’t open attachments that you’re not expecting, or from users who you don’t know (be especially cautious of anyone outside of the @stonybrook.edu domain)