I received an email the other day that was a very good spoof and knock-off email that’s entire purpose was for phishing and dropping off a trojan horse application in its payload. The question is whether or not you’re paying attention close enough to have seen it.

Outlook 2007 does a good job of letting you know when you receive emails that look suspicious. Here’s a couple of things I immediately look for in a seemingly weird or unexpected email.

1.) Is there an attachment? Anytime I receive an email with an attachment I’m always leery of the file. Even if it’s from someone I know. If I didn’t expect it, I usually don’t ever open it.

2.) Be aware of patterns. Does the "sender" normally contact you by email? Do they ever send you a file via email? In the case of the email above from Microsoft, Microsoft wouldn’t email you a file, they almost exclusively provide files for download from their website specifically.

3.) Look for actual link targets in email. Any links in the body of the message, hover over it and look at the tooltip or status bar to see where the link is really pointing. In my opinion, if it’s to an IP address or an uncommon domain name or top level domain, don’t click the link!

That’s my trio of email triage questions I work through with suspicious emails. They’ve protected me for quite some time. Hopefully they’ll be helpful to you as well.

Image: screenshot of email received in Outlook 2007

I’ve been using Plaxo for awhile now and one of the features I liked about it was a custom signature that it would build for you inside of your Outlook application. Did you know that with Outlook 2007 you can create your own business card type signature?

It’s very easy to create a signature file within Outlook 2007 that you can append to any of your messages automatically or as needed when you desire.

From my example above I created a quick one to be used as a basic business response email whenever I respond back to someone. I could also create one for my personal email address too.

The key is to just have a contact card added in your address book with the information you want to use in the signature.

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