For example, Amazon has a dedicated email address and form to report both email and phone phishing.
Fortunately, nothing infects your computer if you dont click any links or respond.
Heres what to do (and what not to do) if you receive a phishing email.
Phishing Email Scam Tracking Software How To Spot One
Weve explained in detail how phishing emails work, which is worth a read if youre unfamiliar with them or dont know how to spot one.
Modern email clients, like Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail, do a great job of filtering out emails that contain malicious code or attachments.
Just because a phishing email lands in your inbox, it doesnt mean your computer is infected with a virus or malware.
Mail clients havent allowed code to run when you open (or preview) an email for a decade or more.
You should never click a link in an email or open an attachment to one unless you are 100 percent confident you know and trust the sender.
You should also never reply to the sendereven to tell them not to send you any further mail.
Once the phisher knows youre reading his emails, hell send more attempts and hope one of them works.
If it appears to be from someone you know, create a new email message, or text or call the person and ask if they sent you the mail.
Dont forward the email, as that just spreads the potential phishing attack.
Type in the website address yourself (or use your preferred search engine) and use their contact options to ask the company if they sent it out.
The representative wont know about individual emails, but hell know if the company has sent out a communication to all customers.
Your IT security policies might require you to forward a phishing email to a specific address, fill out an online report, log a ticket, or merely delete it.
We recommend you find this out before you get a phishing email, if possible.
The mechanism varies from provider to provider, but the reason is the same.
The more data the company has on phishing emails, the better it can make its spamjunk filters to prevent scams from getting through to you.
Click the three dots next to the Reply option in the email, and then select Mark as phishing.
Instead, Apple requests you forward the message to reportphishingapple.com.
In the US, the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency (a branch of the Department of Homeland Security) ask you to forward the mail to phishing-reportus-cert.gov.
In the U.K., you can report the mail to Action Fraud, the National Fraud, and Cyber Crime Reporting Centre.
Instead, email providers and government agencies use the information you send them to try to stop the accounts that send out the emails.
This includes blocking the senders (or adding them to spamjunk filters), shutting down their websites, or even prosecuting them if theyre breaking any laws.
The more people report phishing emails, the more agencies and providers can prevent the senders from sending them.