As 2024 comes to a close we thought an article to help our subscribers address in a small part the use of A.I. and emails by people with criminal intent.

Many of our clients ask what is a phishing email? Microsoft define Phishing (pronounced: fishing) as an attack that attempts to steal your money, or your identity, by getting you to reveal personal information — such as credit card numbers, bank information, or passwords — on websites that pretend to be legitimate. Cybercriminals typically pretend to be reputable companies, friends, or acquaintances in a fake message, which contains a link to a phishing website.

Here at brentdavenport.com we receive a significant number of emails offering to redesign our website, promote our site to number one on Google and offer paid advice on how to improve our business by accessing new client databases.

Considering we are a highly experienced web design company of good standing, this is the first indication that our main contact email address is part of a mass mailing list, any response to such an email is to send us down a path to a prospective cyber criminal.

The first indicator we see and what you should check is the email address, which invariably has been sent from a free address such as google.com/outlook.com/hotmail.com etc. If a company is of good standing and can deliver what they claim on the email then ask yourself this question: –

If they are offering a service as claimed, then why use a free of charge email address? We offer domain registration with a 1-year WordPress hosting package for less than 30 UK Pounds.

So, our advice is to stay away from any organisation using a free email address to offer their goods and services, if they can´t take the time to produce a website, with contact and product information then ask yourself can I trust this organisation?

With the introduction of ChatGPT, Microsoft CoPilot and others creation of content in any given language is now much easier and far more efficient in respect of grammar and spelling mistakes.

There is clear evidence that a large number of phishing emails are generated in countries where English is not the first language. It used to be easy to detect such an email because of the written mistakes which A.I. now corrects.

A.I. without doubt is going to make phishing emails look genuine and significantly harder to detect, so how can you help yourself to prevent being scammed?

• Do not trust any email with a free email address
• If you receive an offer in which you may have an interest from a contact with a domain address, then visit the domain and use their contact details to discuss your requirements
• Be aware that links in an email from an unknown source should not be used
• Do not open any attachments contained in an email from an unknown source, in particular attachments with a .html address
• If you are using Microsoft Outlook then take notice of the banner which quotes “We can´t verify that this email came from the sender so it might not be safe to respond to it”
• It is a good policy not to reply to any emails from an unknown source
• MOST IMPORTANT…..DO NOT GIVE AWAY ANY PERSONAL INFORMATION – Your bank will never ask you to provide this information so if you receive such a request then contact your bank directly to confirm any request you may have received

It is clear that A.I. offers significant benefits which we will discuss over the coming months, however, it has also delivered an additional effective method for cyber criminals who are trying to scam you.

So the rule is to suspect every communication received from an unknown source and apply your own rules to keep you and yours safe from on line criminal activity.

All that remains is for us to wish you all A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year….