Watch Out For Email Invite Scams

Hi, this is Gary at MacMost.com. Let me show you how to protect your yourself against email invitation scams. 

An email invitation scam is a basic phishing scam. A phishing scam is when you get a message that is claiming to be from someplace that it is not and trying to get you to give up access to a website, a password, or maybe installing something on your computer. Basically the weak point in a phishing scam is you. You're being tricked into believing something and then give up information. 

So, for instance, you may get an email that seems to be from your bank saying there is a problem, please login. You click on the link in the email. You go to login to your bank but what you're actually doing is logging into a separate website. You're just giving them the password to your bank account which they can use then to break into your bank account. That's a basic phishing scam. 

Now an email invitation scam is one particular version of this that has a twist. Here's what one may look like. It looks like a party invitation that you could receive from a legitimate online invitation service. So somebody is throwing a party or having an event. They provide email addressees and then the service sends out all the invitations and then tracks RSVP's and all of that. That's been around for decades. In this particular case it looks to be just like one of those invitations. Here's a few other examples I found posted online by the security sections of university websites. So they are trying to protect their students from this kind of scam. They seem to come from a few of the major services like Punchbowl, Paperless, or Evite. You can see they all look very similar. They all look pretty much real like the real invites from these services. But they are not real. What they are trying to get you to do is click on any of the links in the email which is going to pretend to take you to the website for that invitation service and it's going to ask you to login. They ask you for your ID and password to the invitation service which in that case it will get access to your account there. Maybe you also use that same password for other services. You should never reuse the same password at other sites. 

Another thing it could be doing is asking you to login using, say, your Google Account or your iCloud Account, or your Facebook Account. This is typical now where you go to other websites and instead of using an individual login just for that site you login using your credentials from one of those big providers. If that is the case it's getting your password and access to that site and perhaps to all of your stuff because of that. It could even be going so far as to be asking for two-factor authentication. So you're actually giving full access despite all of the security being correct on the other side. You're actually the weak point giving up that information. 

Another thing it could simply be asking you to do is to download something. It could be saying, in order to see this invitation you need to download our software or install an extension or something like that. Of course that's just malware. But these aren't regular phishing emails. There's a twist when it comes to these. A regular phishing email just comes from some big company. Maybe it is your bank. Maybe it's a company like Apple or Google, or Facebook, or Microsoft. But it's a big company so you don't suspect the email is coming from somewhere bad. However, these type of phishing emails seem to come from a person and a person you know. It seems your friend is sending you an invite, not a scammer. But remember that email from addresses and reply to addresses can be completely faked. So just because it says it is from your friend doesn't mean it is. But wait a minute! How does the scammer know that you know that other person. Well it is actually kind of simple. There are a ton of different places out there where there are a list of different email addresses. Like they could actually be breaking into their invitation service account and see all the email addresses they previously sent invitations to. Or they can be breaking into any kind of service where group emails are sent. Or any kind of email service where there is some sort of address book sort. Even online groups have a list of names and addresses of everybody in the group. All it takes is for one person's account to be hacked and all of those email addresses and names are in a list ready to be used for this kind of scam. 

It may not even be the person that was hacked who is in the From email address. Like they give a person A but their account was person B, the sender of the fake email, and person C, you the recipient of the email. So just because it came from your friend doesn't even mean that you friend's account was hacked somewhere. It could be a mutual friend or some group you both belong to that was compromised and that's how your email address and the other person's email address were linked and were put in this scam. So just because it says it comes from somebody you know doesn't mean it is not a scam. As a matter of fact that is pretty much how this entire scam works. It always seems to come from somebody you know. 

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So what are the red flags to look out for. First were you expecting an invitation from this person. If you didn't even know your cousin was graduating or had some sort of life event and there was going to be a party then that's a red flag. 

Next pay careful attention to the email address that it came from. Not what it says in the body of the message but actually the From address in the email that is at the top of the Mail App or however you're viewing your email. An invitation from one of these legitimate services will come from that service, not from the person sending the invitation. The From address should be that company, not the person themselves. All of the major services do it this way. Any the links that you're asked to click to see more information about the event, they should go to the service that sent the email. So you be able to quickly identify, in the message, which service sent this message. Any link should go to that same domain from that service. If it goes somewhere else that a big red flag. 

If you go past all of that and actually click and go somewhere are you asked to log on. Another thing about all of these services is that they don't require the invitees to log onto something to see the information. Of course a huge red flag, something you should definitely not do, is you're asked to download something either in the message or after you click and go to the page that tells you about the event. You shouldn't have to download anything to view the invitation. If it is actually asking you to download something it is going to be malware. Don't Do It!

Now this has been going on long enough that all major invitation services actually have information on their site about this. So you can read directly from them about what to look for and how to protect yourself. Here are some URL's and I'll include these with the post at MacMost.com

Now what to do if you get one of these. You get an invitation. You recognize that it is a scam. Just delete it and move on. Don't waste your time with it. However, if you think it could be real or there is a tiny chance it could be real there's an easy way to find out. If you know the person forget about the email that you received and reach out to that person using their real email address or a text message or a phone call or the next time you see them ask them. That's a surefire way to know if they are actually having an event. Also be aware that there are plenty of different variations on this. For instance, here are two actual emails I received that are kind of the same thing. This is inviting me to a reunion gathering from somebody I actually know. But they didn't actually send the email. This one here is inviting me to log into a site to see some photographs. This actually seemed to come from a photographer friend of mine. So it was kind of plausible and I had been invited to see some of their photos in the past. But clearly the link here is fixed. Most likely that service had its account hacked some way and that's how it knew that I was connected to that person and that I had previously looked at some of their photos. The big takeaway here is that phishing emails don't always have to seem to come from some big company. But can seem to come from someone you actually know. This is very easily done and attempts to trick you into clicking on a link to giving up your password or downloading malware. 

Hope you found this useful Stay safe and thanks for watching.