Blog Email Marketing and SMS

How to avoid email spoofing

Imagen How to avoid email spoo

Spoofing is a very serious security problem for a company's email marketing. It occurs when the attacker impersonates a brand in order to deceive the user. These cybercrimes are a risk for both the sender and the recipient because they are usually economic (theft of credit card data or other personal information) and the most affected companies are those related to social networks, logistics, online shops and those that send transactional messages.

Recommendations to avoid an email spoofing attack

Spoofing can occur by using a domain of the email sender or by the IP (which can also affect caller ID leading to fraudulent SMS). They use techniques to spoof message headers, making it appear trustworthy when it is not genuine.

This brand damage is difficult to overcome because, after a negative experience such as financial loss due to fraud, subscribers may not feel cared for or protected by the organisation and may want to unsubscribe from future communications. Furthermore, when the user loses trust in legitimate mailings, it extends to the products or services.

A bulk mailer can prevent a spoofing attack against the brand by protecting its reputation as a sender. To do so, it must:

Verify the identity by implementing protocols such as SPF registration for the IP and DMARC for the domain. Authenticating the sender is the most effective option and it also improves our deliverability and stops your fraudulent emails going straight to the spam folder.
Make sure you have a clean list of inactive accounts to avoid traps. Platforms only take care of unsubscribes and bounces, but an email verification detects other types of accounts that need to be cleaned up on a regular basis.
Send messages that pass through anti-spam filters without difficulty so that email managers do not block them. This is a good practice that you should pay attention to every time you send an email.
Use a trusted provider or protect your mail server to stop phishing. In Acrelia we take very seriously the security of our customers and we have the ENS certification to demonstrate this commitment.

And remember that cybercriminals keep changing and improving their techniques, so keep an eye out for any new developments that could affect your brand.

Tips to avoid spoofing emails

In order for recipients to trust us as legal senders, it is advisable to do educational work and send them messages specifically to remind them how to avoid falling into a spoofing campaign. This can be a dedicated campaign or small tips included for example in the newsletter so that they are alerted when:

The account is from a free provider and not from their own domain. Since February 2024, both Google and Yahoo are trying to fight spam by not allowing more than 5,000 emails per day to be sent from their free accounts if the domain is not verified.
The message asks you to send your password or billing details - and they are always in a hurry to get you to react without thinking too much! Using two-step authentication to access accounts is the safest option in these cases.
The design may look correct, but the text is full of spelling or grammatical errors. The reason is usually a bad translation because it is not a message originally written in the language it has been sent.
The links are shortened or go to pages with names similar to the official ones. Although the former is already a reason to reduce deliverability, the latter has another solution, which is to look carefully before clicking.
Attachments are dubious and unsolicited files. Except for invoices, records and other transactional documents, it is rare for bulk mailings to attach a file without falling into spam.