HYWW: Spamming techniques; 3D-printed pandemic visors; K-Way Everest mission update.

IF YOU’RE AN email user – and who isn’t? – you’ve definitely received that pesky email newsletter you signed up for years ago, but rather than hitting the unsubscribe button you just ignore it and move on to the next email. While those newsletters are usually harmless (and sometimes even informative if you bothered to read them), others can pose a danger to our cyber lives.

Over the last two decades, spam emails and phishing scams have become the go-to tools for would-be cybercriminals. While we, as a society, are far more internet literate than in the past, the less savvy among us are still vulnerable. Spam encompasses not only commercial information

– it often includes links that lead to phishing or malware sites, and spamming techniques are constantly refined and improved.

According to statista.com, more than 50 per cent of the world’s emails sent in 2018 were spam mail and unwanted ads. But where did all of those unsolicited cyberattacks come from? Despite large-scale internet censorship and website blocking in China, most of the spam mail in the world came from that country, which accounted for 11.69 per cent. The United States and Germany followed in second and third place, constituting around nine- and seven per cent of all spam.

Typically, the main focus for spam emails is to sell products, but often the email from a reputable service or institution will contain a fake message. According to Daniel Markuson, a digital privacy expert at NordVPN, the goal for any spammer is to have the unwitting recipient open the email and click on the suspicious links or download the attachment containing malware. ‘The risks are high because they want to trick you into giving away sensitive information such as your login credentials or your bank-card number,’ says Daniel.

The days of bad grammar and bogus-looking emails are gone, as spammers develop their skills to increase the chance of an email looking authentic. Spam mail is often hardly recognisable and isn’t always detected by filtering algorithms. While spam mail may look legitimate at first glance, there are a couple of key indicators that any user should always take into consideration:

» A spoofed sender name. It will look as though the email came from a legitimate organisation, but if you hover over ‘Sender’ it will reveal the true sender. For instance, it might look like Popular Mechanics sent you something, but the email originated from, for example, popularmechanics@youvebeentricked.net.

» Embedded links. Social hackers might include a link in the email asking the user to log back into their account, which will lead to an infected website. One way of protecting yourself is to rightclick on the link to check if it looks authentic.

» Email attachments. Attachments may contain malware or files that have disguised themselves as viruses. Don’t open them and rather draft a fresh email to the person you think it came from to check if the attachments are safe.

Below: In 2018, spam emails accounted for more than 50 per cent of all emails sent. They originated from all around the world, however, more than half of those came from China, the United States, and Germany.