How to Spot Any Spoofed & Fake Email (Ultimate Guide)

YOU'LL NEVER GET TRICKED AGAIN! (Scammers will hate this)

▼ Time Stamps: ▼
0:00 - Intro
1:49 - The "From" Domain
7:17 - The Reply-To Field
10:07 - Mailed By & Signed By
12:16 - Authentication Headers (Basics)
16:49 - SPF
17:47 - DKIM
21:32 - DMARC
23:46 - How SPF Works
24:59 - How DKIM Works
26:59 - How DMARC Works
27:53 - WHY BOTHER?

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

[ThioJoe]

Well this video ended up being way longer and way more work than I thought (I believe it’s the longest serious video I’ve ever made). Be sure to like it because if it flops I'm going to stick my head in the Large Hadron Collider

[terrydillon]

Yes, last week. I kept getting a message saying they were from Netflix and they were going to cancel my account if I didn’t update my address. Funny thing is I don’t have an account with Netflix

[dogastus]

Best policy: Never click on a hypertext link in an email.

[noelj]

I did not know non-ASCII characters were allowed in email addresses. Thank you for such a detailed informative video.

[ktheveg]

Wanna know what you do? Get a font that only has the a-z characters, and also a couple other important ones like 0-9 and some important symbols. Then set a fallback font to make the email address super obviously not latin characters. This is how you COULD do it.

[joesterling]

The sad part is that anyone who can follow your entire presentation without their eyes glazing over was already capable enough of avoiding scam email. It is simply too complex for average email users to keep in their heads.

[sowellca]

This video is extremely informative, extremely well done, and is the kind of video that can make a difference for a lot of people. Thanks Joe, well done.

[ScotHarkins]

I've been tracking spammers since the 1990s, and this video definitely covered the bases without getting too hairy for most folk. This can be an intimidating task, so simple straightforward examples are key and should cover most such threats.

Good coverage of caveats, too. There are so so many angles, and limitations, so those this-but caveats are important. Something can look clean, but still fail the sniff test (BS Meter).

Great job!

[fentsellers]

nice video! im gonna show this to my grandma

[chrisengland]

One of the best defences against such scams is to have several email addresses - one that only your friends and family have, another for your bank, a third for well known suppliers and trusted companies and several throw away ones that you only give out to folk that you don't really trust. (You can make this easy by using forwarding on them, so that you don't have to log on to several servers.) Then when you get an email from "your bank" about an apparent problem with your account (already highly unlikely) and it arrives on one of your throw away addresses, you know immediately that it's fake because you don't use that email address for banking,

[ruthlessadmin]

The fact that there needs to be a 30 minute video explaining all of this tells me that these big tech companies have some interest in not protecting their users. Most, if not all of this, seems like checks that could be built into our email clients fairly easily.

[MrGreen-mncs]

In the first 7min its already information overload... 👌👌👌

[BSGSV]

It is getting to the point that flying to the sender and visiting them in person might actually be easier than exercising this level of scrutiny for every one of the hundreds of emails that show up every morning.

[marksawesomeadventures]

Wow man, You really did your homework on this one huh? 😁 I wanna say I am really thankful you are taking the time to make Videos like this, because there are SO MANY Tech people out there teaching people how to hack and scam, (I think just to they can Create the "Problem" so then THEY can become the "Solution") and no one is Teach people how to Defend themselves from these Hackers. I'm really glad you are fighting the good fight here man. Thanks!

[bridgecross]

I try to pass this knowledge on to the users in my company. But in the end, I just end up telling them "don't click on links or attachments in email" Only if they were expecting something from someone they have personally spoken to.

[crafter]

Also you should watch out for if the domain has zero-with spaces because those have no width so they are invisible

[harryshector]

Facinating - but so much information that at the end I just said “What’d he say?” It’s a difficult subject, and I think there’s a real opportunity for someone to incorporate these logic tree steps into mail clients.

[brianwest]

I have long been annoyed that email software doesn't easily and prominently show the actual email address of the sender and reply-to. Some only show the alias and not even the email address! Shameful because they know full well that this aids scammers.

Definitely learned a number of things from this video and am now even more annoyed that email software doesn't make this easier.

[SWillibr]

Thanks Joe. I just finished upgrading our agency email system yesterday. You're video timing is impeccable!

[privateger]

As mailserver admin, overall a solid video.

I do think it's a bit...weird to show the "X% of domains use SPF" statistic when the absolute majority of domains have never and never will send mails. Most people outsource their mails to providers nowadays, because, as you've shown brilliantly in this video, email is a pain.