PowerDMARC

Is this email real? How to Check if an Email is Legit?

Ahona Rudra
Is-this-email-real

A legit email address is more than just letters and symbols; it’s like an ID that makes people trust who you’re talking to in a place where honesty matters a lot. In today’s fast-changing world of texting and emailing, everyone wonders if the emails they get are real. 

Around 3.4 billion spam emails are sent every day for phishing attacks. You might have also gotten many of those, but they usually end up in the spam folder without you ever knowing about it. 

This guide will help you know how to check if an email is legit and how to pick the right tool for checking emails for your business.

Key Characteristics of a Legit Email Address

Email validation is like checking if an email address is real and is being used by someone. A good email address looks right and belongs to a real person or company. It’s important because it helps keep things safe when we’re online.

Here are the key characteristics that define a legit email address:

Ways to Check if an Email Address Is Real

Let’s have a look at how you can check if an email is legit or not!

Check the Domain Name

To tell if an email address might not be accurate, look at the part after the @ symbol. Fake emails often use names that sound like well-known ones but have small mistakes or changes. For example, gmail.com is real, while something like Gmail.con or gmoil.com could potentially be fake and call for double-checking. 

This can happen with other common ones like yahoo.com and hotmail.com too. Be careful if you see an email domain that doesn’t fit with who it’s supposed to come from. 

For example, it might be wrong if someone named John Smith has an email from acmeproducts.com. If there are many numbers or strange letters in the domain name, this could also mean it’s fake. On the flip side, domains that match a known group or person usually mean the email is okay to trust. 

Emails coming from places like microsoft.com or harvard.edu are more believable. Regular ones, such as gmail.com for personal emails, are typically safe. Checking where the email comes from can quickly help you spot fakes without wasting time on them.

Look for Odd Formatting

Watch out for these signs that an email address might be fake:

A good email address will have the following:

If you see things that don’t look right, like those above, it could mean someone’s trying to trick you. Stick to emails that look normal to stay safe from scams.

Verify the Mail Server

To find out if an email address is real, you can check the computer that sends emails to that address. When you send an email, it goes through this special computer.

You must look at a particular record in the domain’s settings to see which syestem does this. This record tells you which computers are used for sending emails from that domain.

Here’s how you can find this information:

nslookup -q=MX example.com 
dig mx example.com

When you look up which mail servers are connected to a domain, it shows who handles the emails for that website. If you find a working mail server, this means the email’s website is real.

But remember, even if the site is real, you still need to check if the actual email address exists. If there is no mail server or no one owns the website name (domain), then emails from that site are probably not good.

So when you’re trying to see if an email is genuine or fake, seeing if its website matches its mail server helps!

Send a Test Email

To see if an email works, try sending a simple test message. Write a short email with “Testing email address“ as the subject and say, “This is just to check your email” in the message. 

Then, wait to see if you get an error displaying that the email didn’t go through or if it sends fine. But be careful not to send too many emails to addresses you don’t know. You should only do this to ensure someone’s given you the right one. 

Otherwise, people might think you’re sending spam, which could cause problems for your email account. It’s best to test emails shared with you on purpose so no one thinks of your messages as junk mail.

Using inappropriate words in an email body can also result in your email landing in the spam folder. A quick solution to improve your email’s effectiveness is using an AI paragraph rewriter to make it concise and more informative.

Check Email Deliverability

One way to check if an email address is legitimate is to see if it will accept incoming mail. There are a few tools you can use to test email deliverability:

To check if an email address is good, type it into these tools. They will try to send a test email or check with the email server. If the email goes through, the address probably works and is real.

But if it doesn’t go through, the address might not be working or even fake. This way of testing helps you distinguish bad or unused emails from active and real ones. Using this and other ways of checking can help you know if an email is okay to use.

Look up Email Headers

Email headers contain technical information about an email, including the sending mail server, receiving mail server, date/time sent, authentication methods and more.

Viewing the full email headers can provide clues about whether an email address is legitimate. 

Here’s how to check email headers:

  1. Open the email message in your email client (Gmail, Outlook, etc).
  2. Look for the option to view the “full headers” or “original message.” In Gmail, click the dropdown arrow next to the reply button, then select “Show original.”
  3. Scan through the headers for any unusual or suspicious entries:
  1. Research unfamiliar headers like X-Originating-IP to uncover more context.
  2. Consider running headers through a verification tool for analysis.

Inspecting the full email headers requires some technical knowledge but can reveal vital clues about an email’s authenticity and path. When in doubt, look up the headers before trusting a questionable sender.

Use an Email Verification API

Email verification APIs provide automated checking of email addresses through a simple API call. This can validate email addresses more efficiently compared to manual verification methods.

Some key benefits of using an email verification API include:

By leveraging an email legitimacy API, businesses and developers can automate the process of checking email legitimacy. This saves considerable time compared to manual verification while also improving accuracy.

Note: While these methods are valid, some may require technical knowledge or access to specific tools. Additionally, it’s important to note that none of these methods can guarantee 100% accuracy in determining the legitimacy of an email address.

How Can Illegitimate Emails Harm You?

An illegitimate email is any unauthorized email crafted with the intent of phishing for details or attempting to insert malicious software into the system. Illegitimate emails may try to impersonate a legitimate email address. 

It’s a known fact that these illegitimate emails can pose a significant threat. But the good news is that these scammers cannot do anything if you just open the email. Real problems occur when you click on any phishing link inside the email, download an email attachment, or reply to the email with your sensitive information. 

So does it mean that you are totally safe if you’re only opening an email? Not exactly. While the risk of fraud is significantly low, it’s still there. Emails may contain tracking pixels or similar software, manipulate receivers into taking action through social engineering, or embedded malicious code. 

So how does one keep oneself safe from scam emails sent from their own domain? You can use an email authentication protocol, DMARC, that is intended to fight against email fraud and phishing attacks. It allows email recipients to determine whether or not an email is from the specific domain for which it claims to be from using SPF or DKIM. The sender can specify strict actions to be taken against any illegitimate email sent from their own domain using a DMARC policy.

If you want DMARC for your domain, consider checking out PowerDMARC. We provide DMARC reports in a human-readable format with key points mentioned in graphs, numbers, and charts. This improves your email authentication visibility and helps you fix deliverability issues more easily. 

How To Avoid Being a Prey to Email Scammers and Hackers

Every now and then, someone becomes prey to such email scammers and hackers. So to avoid this from happening and so you can have better days ahead, do these 5 things:

If you’ve opened a link in a scam email, make sure to follow the following steps to save yourself:

Final Words

Having a real email address is important for safe and honest communication over the internet. If you know what makes an email address suitable, people and companies can feel more sure as they use the web. 

By using the tips we’ve discussed, your business will better check emails properly, build trust, and avoid problems from fake emails. Even though there is no guarantee that the methods will detect all fraudulent emails and will be able to distinguish between malicious email addresses or potentially misspelled ones – they are viable precautionary measures. 

When you start making sure your emails are valid, think of it as taking the first step toward a safer online world by double-checking whether email addresses are genuine. So, if you ever find yourself wondering, ” Is this email real?”, remember these guidelines for secure communication.

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