Email fraud is a massive problem for businesses and consumers. Hackers can easily create fake emails that spoof banks, reputable companies and even your friends to steal personal information from you. The good news is that there are ways to spot a scam email.
A free email verification tool can help you confirm if an email address exists and whether it is valid. It can also help you verify the email’s domain configuration, check for spam complaints and scams, analyze recent abuse threat reports and more. These tools aren’t a replacement for more robust identity verification services, but they can provide some low-friction, passive protection against identity theft and other online fraud.
While an email fraud checker can help you identify high risk users and payments, it cannot confirm their identity or prevent fraudulent transactions on its own. For this, it’s essential to incorporate other security measures, such as PII verification, into your business practices. PII verification is an automated process that confirms an email’s corresponding name, date of birth, location, and other information against public databases to ensure it matches the email address on record. It is an excellent way to protect yourself against identity fraud and other types of online fraud.
The best way to avoid phishing and other online scams is not to open any links or download any attachments that you aren’t expecting. If you receive a suspicious email asking for your personal information, call or research the company before responding. If the email is requesting your bank login credentials or credit card details, always seek verbal confirmation of the request before providing any information.
How to use an email fraud checker
When you’re looking for the best email fraud checker, look for one that offers multiple features. In addition to an email address validation and verification, you’ll want a tool that checks for spam complaints and spam traps, determines the role based status (e.g., sales, support) of an email address, and verifies the email domain’s authenticity and DMARC compliance. This will improve your chances of getting your emails delivered and into the inbox, rather than buried in the SPAM folder.
An email fraud checker can also offer a wide range of other features, such as verification of the user’s first and last name using a public database, reverse ID verification, live appends, and unique behavioral analytics that can identify bad actors. These advanced checks can prevent fraud and false registrations, payments and leads.
In short, a quality email fraud checker should give you confidence that your communications with clients and prospects are legitimate. You’ll also want a solution that can help you implement a strong authentication and encryption strategy, which can reduce your risk of cyberattacks and data breaches. To get started, try MailCheck for free today if you’re a UK organisation. It conducts many of the simple checks mentioned above in just seconds. If you aren’t eligible to use this tool, learn how other UK organisations are using MailCheck to protect their service users from spoof email.