4 ms·

In my company a lot of systems like HR have gone from internal servers to cloud so E-mails come from a lot of different URLs as sender. I consider myself pretty

In my company a lot of systems like HR have gone from internal servers to cloud so E-mails come from a lot of different URLs as sender. I consider myself pretty savvy but if a mail looks halfways plausible I don't really know how to tell if it's legitimate or not. The only way to fix this would be to sign E-mails so we can verify authenticity. I think it shouldn't be too hard to write an Outlook plugin to do this.

kovrik 8y ago
If I am not sure whether an email is legitimate or not, then I just ignore it assuming that if it is something real and important, then the other party will find a way to contact me (send another email, call me, approach me in person etc.).
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  With stuff like information about health insurance or 401k information there won't be any follow-up but it's very important to me.
  - wahern 8y ago
    Those are easy. Just log into the portal directly. Imagine if someone from your benefits provider called and asked for your social security number or other PII for confirmation. Would you give it to them? I hope not. You should ask (as I always do) for their name and extension and tell them that you'll return their call through a published telephone number. Never once have I had someone balk at that, and I've done it countless times for many years. For a link to a benefits provider, it's trivial to log into the portal through a known good domain and look around for whatever piece of information or news they were trying to communicate. The hard issues come with all the random services HR contracts for stuff like harassment training, etc. If I can't corroborate a link myself then as a last resort I can simply ask HR (or w'ever department) directly, or as previously said just ignore it and wait for someone to say something. At some point the usage of so many third-party services is just an insane security risk. It's almost comical when the corp security team runs a phishing test and on the same day you get a half-dozen e-mail messages from other departments with twice as many links to random domains. At some point you're just like, "fsck 'em" and have half a mind to not bother caring anymore. But it's not just their security on the line, it's yours, too. I still use mutt for personal e-mail so maybe this is all easier for me. I've yet to become accustomed to hidden links or embedded multimedia in e-mail.
- paulie_a 8y ago
  I just flat out don't read work email anymore. Everything gets deleted. If it is important someone has mentioned it in slack, came over to my desk to tell me or it was publically abounced
spc476 8y ago
The Corporate Overlords hired a company to send us fake phishing emails to test us peons. I found out that this company will set a header saying it's a fake phishing email, probably to get it past our spam firewall.

kovrik 8y ago

If I am not sure whether an email is legitimate or not, then I just ignore it assuming that if it is something real and important, then the other party will find a way to contact me (send another email, call me, approach me in person etc.).

maxxxxx 8y ago
With stuff like information about health insurance or 401k information there won't be any follow-up but it's very important to me.
- wahern 8y ago
  Those are easy. Just log into the portal directly. Imagine if someone from your benefits provider called and asked for your social security number or other PII for confirmation. Would you give it to them? I hope not. You should ask (as I always do) for their name and extension and tell them that you'll return their call through a published telephone number. Never once have I had someone balk at that, and I've done it countless times for many years. For a link to a benefits provider, it's trivial to log into the portal through a known good domain and look around for whatever piece of information or news they were trying to communicate. The hard issues come with all the random services HR contracts for stuff like harassment training, etc. If I can't corroborate a link myself then as a last resort I can simply ask HR (or w'ever department) directly, or as previously said just ignore it and wait for someone to say something. At some point the usage of so many third-party services is just an insane security risk. It's almost comical when the corp security team runs a phishing test and on the same day you get a half-dozen e-mail messages from other departments with twice as many links to random domains. At some point you're just like, "fsck 'em" and have half a mind to not bother caring anymore. But it's not just their security on the line, it's yours, too. I still use mutt for personal e-mail so maybe this is all easier for me. I've yet to become accustomed to hidden links or embedded multimedia in e-mail.
paulie_a 8y ago
I just flat out don't read work email anymore. Everything gets deleted. If it is important someone has mentioned it in slack, came over to my desk to tell me or it was publically abounced

spc476 8y ago

The Corporate Overlords hired a company to send us fake phishing emails to test us peons. I found out that this company will set a header saying it's a fake phishing email, probably to get it past our spam firewall.