Hover Test for Emails

I received this email recently – and I thought I would create a post about how to hover on an email to see if it is legitimate.

I have a Netflix account so when I first looked at this email, it does look legitimate – the logo looks right, no spelling mistakes.  Let us do a hover test on this email to see if there might be a problem.

Even though the name on the sending email is Netflix, the email address looks a little strange. It is not Netflix.com or Netflix.ca – It is Netflix-gc.ca.

This does confuse some people as the address has the word Netflix, but when you see hyphenated words like this one, that is a first clue that this could be a problem

Now, let’s go further and do the hover. Simply place your cursor over the link that they provide. In this case it is a large red button that says “update account now”.

When I place the cursor over the “Update Your account” red button – do not click on the button, just rest the cursor on top; I see the link that this button will send me to if I click on it.

As you can see, the site that I am being sent to a site that is not Netflix but some site named “Chinagroup”.

This fails the legitimate email test. This is obvious a fake site and the email should be deleted

Use this technique on emails that are asking for account, or personal information.

I hope this helps!