How can you determine whether an email link is authentic?

Answer 1

It's very simple. After you email a person a failure notice will be sent clarifying if there is a user that has that email address, if there is no failure notice then the email is real.

An email address has two parts:

• The domain or destination site is the part after the at sign.
• The Local-part of the address is before the at sign. It is a maibox id or username of the person with the email address.

When you send an email (i.e to username@domain.com), one of the following problems may happen:

• If domain.com does not exist, the email will bounce back with an error message.
• If domain.com exist but username does not exist, the email will bounce back with an error message.
• If domain.com exists but is not accepting emails, the "system" holds the message for a while (hours or days) waiting for the message to get through. he email will bounce back with an error if it takes too long for the message to get through.

Answer 2

There are many ways in which you can determine an authentic email. To begin with, look at your email account settings in this you may find a way of setting the account to something like 'Exclusive', this means that only emails you have asked for, are from family or friends, or from a contact addressed directly to you should all go into your email inbox. Others that are junk, the sender is not in your contacts list or a 'Safe Sender'(an email from a person or company you have approved) these emails will go into your junk or trash boxes.

Always check your junk/trash boxes as an email you want may well go there, before you have had the chance to put them in your contacts list or mark them as a safe sender. If the email offers you something like a body part enhancement, a date(and you are not a member of a dating site), the chance of cheating on your partner, tells you you have won something(and you know you didn't enter a competition), says that you have been left something by a person you don't know or have never met. These are phishing emails. Phishing(pronounced fishing) emails are from scammers wanting your personal details, such as name, age, d.o.b, sex, address, bank account details, phone number, they may even ask things like your height, weight, hair colour etc. DO NOT GIVE ANY PERSONAL DETAILS. The moment you do, you could end up in such a tricky situation, that you may not be able to reverse it without going to the authorities and even then it could take years to sort it out. Sorry for scaring you.

Banks, government departments such as the Inland Revenue, HM Customs and anything official I GUARANTEE DO NOT EVER contact you by email, if there is a problem or they want you, they will contact you by letter, phone or by personal visit, NEVER EVER by email!! Please do not fall for this. Oragnisations such as eBay or PayPal will ALWAYS address you by your username and real name, they will NEVER address an email to you saying 'Dear Paypal member' or 'Dear eBay user' or anything similar.

Beware of emails that do not address you by name eg: smith@smithson.co.uk or they just start into the message without addressing you at all.

I hope that this covers most emails for you. Im sure that others will add to this answer. Best of luck.

Answer 3

mousing over it