Nidhi Razdan and Prathamesh Sonsurkar

Nature of the message 

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Who will win the Punjab Elections?

BJP 32.84%

AAP 41.79%

INC 25.37%

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Authentic emails will not redirect you to any other website — the content will be displayed within the body of the email. Phishing emails, on the other hand, are designed to redirect you to a lander page. Phishing emails try to create a sense of emergency: in that, they will mention that you are shortlisted for a lucrative reward or opening or  have been hacked or otherwise compromised. Regard these with caution, Sawant advises. 

Even if you have initiated contact with the institution and the reply to your email is not on the same thread, make sure to cross-check by contacting the email address mentioned on the official website, before acting on the information. “In Razdan’s case, she was researched by the scammers. They knew that she, as a journalist, would be especially alert, and hence took added measures such as having multiple people contact her,” Sonsurkar suggests.

Assess the technicalities 

Your email client, such as Gmail or Outlook mail, will give you a ‘show original message’ option. Clicking on this will reveal certain vital certificates that authenticate that the email being sent is legitimate. These include SPF, which indicates that the email has been sent from the dedicated sender (many scammers modify the ‘From’ field to mimic a legitimate sender); DKIM, which means that the email has reached you without being tampered or edited; and DMARC, which confirms that your mail has passed through the first two filters. All of these parameters must be confirmed as PASS, in case the email is legitimate, says Sonsurkar.