I’ve written quite a few posts about phishing over the last few years, and I’ve probably been guilty at times of assuming everyone knows what is meant by “mouseover,” or that everyone knows offhand how to spot a disguised link in an email message.

I made this graphic to clarify. The email example here was a run-of-the mill “Your debit card has been deactivated, click here to verify” phishing attack (extremely easy to see through if you happen to NOT have an American Express debit card, which I don’t). Some phishing attacks aren’t as obvious, but the method to spot a disguised link (one that says “americanexpress.com” but actually leads to a look-alike website designed to harvest account numbers, passwords and other personal information) is the same:

Not every email program will have this exact same layout, but for the most part the actual link will be seen somewhere near the bottom of the page, on the left.