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In an age with cyber-crime and phishing scams reaching all-time highs, it's important to know some basic tips to identify such illegitimate e-mails.

Any time you get an e-mail you think is legitimate, pay close attention to any links and warnings Outlook may display.

If you hover your mouse over the link for a second or two Outlook will display the destination of the link.

Here's an example of a link that matches what it is supposed to be:

A lot of scam e-mails will have proper links at the top and/or bottom of the e-mail like they took it from a legitimate source, but where they ask you to take action to log in to access your account or download updates it will usually point somewhere else.

If you get an e-mail from Microsoft proper URLs would contain Microsoft.com, Microsoft.ca, msn.com, msn.ca, etc.  The same goes for banks, so be sure you know the precise address.  Often it will be close but not actually it – they could even have it all in uppercase and have a zero (0) instead of a letter “O” like MICR0SOFT.com or R0YALBANK.com.  They are also starting to register names ending in .cc, .ca, .to, .cn, etc.

Here's an example of a link that does not match what it is supposed to be (and is therefore a phishing scam):

If you hover and see a proper URL like “http://www.microsoft.com/” that is correct.  If however you see “http://www.microsoft.com.updatehererightnow.com/” they are attempting to fool you.  In this example someone would have registered “updatehererightnow.com” and made a sub-domain of microsoft.com within it.

Of course if you see an IP address like “http://128.253.112.221/” or “http://128.253.112.221/microsoft.com” this is again a bad URL and will lead you to someone scamming information.

Another form that could come up is http://2058312345/ which is just a different variation of the IP address.

Lastly you may encounter redirectors which are hosted with the company but point elsewhere (although most companies have disabled this by now).  In the past people could use a URL like “http://www.msn.com/redir?http://somesiteelsewhere.com/” and it would fool people because the URL they clicked had www.msn.com in it.

Also keep in mind that most companies are aware of how easy and common it is to forge e-mails and therefore only send text e-mails without any links in them urging you to contact them via the regular methods.  Usually banks in particular will send you these notification-only e-mails without links just letting you know your August statement is available for viewing with Online Banking.