Have you ever gotten an email from one of your friends that says something along the lines of “Thought you’d find this interesting.” followed by a link to a website? Hopefully you deleted the email without clicking the link, because it was most likely a malicious link.
You might argue that the email came from a friend that you trust, but you would be wrong. If you actually click on the sender’s name, it will show you the email address that was used to send the email. You will see that email that send the message was not your friend’s typical email address. In fact, it will probably be a random assortment of numbers and letters.
This is why you should never click links in emails unless you have verified the authenticity of the sender. Once you are sure that the email came from a credible source, you can click on the link.
Another thing to be wary of in emails, are attachments. Attachments in emails can contain virus that open up your computer to attack from hackers. As with links, you should never open attachments unless you have verified that the email can from a trustworthy sender.
If you ever get an email from a friend that wants you to open an attachment, or click on a link, but you are not sure if you can trust it, just talk to the friend through some other method. Ask him or her if they sent you an email recently with a link or attachment. This is a sure fire way to determine the credibility of an email from a friend.