How to Spot a Scam Email Now That They Look Real
For years, the advice for spotting a scam email was simple: look for bad spelling and clumsy grammar. A real bank or supplier writes properly, the thinking went, so a message full of mistakes was probably fake. It was easy to teach, and for a long time it worked.
It doesn't anymore. Scammers now use AI to write their emails, and AI writes cleanly. The typos and awkward phrasing that used to give phishing away are gone, and the messages landing in your team's inbox read as well as anything from a real company. Worse, they can be written to sound like they came from someone you already know.
Why the old advice stopped working
The spelling and grammar tell worked because a lot of scammers were writing in a language that wasn't their own, and the mistakes showed. AI took that away.
Why these emails are so convincing now
The writing is clean - A scam email reads like a normal business email, because a machine wrote it in seconds, in whatever tone the attacker asked for.
It's personal - Attackers can feed public details about your company into an AI tool, pulled from your website, your team's LinkedIn profiles, or a press release, and get a message tailored to you: the right names, the right job titles, and a believable reason to be in touch.
There's more of it - With AI Evolving rapidly and the speed in which it takes to produce means that attackers send far for more and increase their chances of a successful attack.
These days, the scam email isn't the obvious one anymore. Instead of "Dear customer, your account is suspended," someone in your finance team gets a message that looks like it's from a supplier they really deal with, mentions a real project, and asks to update the bank details for the next invoice. It reads exactly like a real supplier email. The only thing wrong is that the supplier never sent it.
Here are the signs you should still pay attention to
If you can’t trust how an email is written, look at what it’s asking you to do. That’s where the real warning signs are, and AI hasn’t changed them:
It asks for money, gift cards, or a payment to a new account.
It asks for a login, a verification code, or personal details.
It creates pressure: a deadline, a threat, or a "do this now."
It asks you to change the bank details for an invoice or a supplier.
It comes with a link or attachment you weren't expecting.
The display name looks right, but the actual email address doesn't match it.
Every one of these is about what the email is asking for.
So the rule to teach your team is simple:
When a message is about money, logins, or how you pay someone, slow down before you act and to ask if unsure.
Check money & login requests another way
If an email asks you to pay a new account or change a supplier’s bank details, call the person on a number you already have. Don’t reply to the email or use a number it gives you.
How to protect your team
Stop telling staff to watch for bad spelling
Tell them to look at what the email is asking for, and to slow down when it’s about money or logins.
Make it easy to report a suspicious email
Make sure your team know how to report and that no check of an email is a wasted check.
Turn on phishing - resistant MFA or passkeys
So a stole password is harder to use even if someone gets tricked.
Make one rule for payment changes
Confirm every change to bank details by phone, even when it’s urgent.
Remind the team now and then
Good practice is to keep reminding the team about how perfect scam emails can look. A quick five - minute chat beats a poster nobody reads. Also a good cyber security training platform can help with this.
Are your team up to date with their knowledge? Are you protecting the business effeciently?
Here at 5c you can forward us emails you are unsure of and one of our trained engineers will evaluate and provide next steps.
We can also recommend cyber training platform to roll onto your team.
Article used with permission from The Technology Press.