.png)
Not long ago, a scam email was easy to spot. Poor grammar, generic greetings, or suspicious links that looked nothing like the brand they were pretending to be. Most people learned to recognize them and felt reasonably confident in their ability to delete them before any damage was done, but that confidence is now a liability.
Phishing emails in 2026 are professionally written, visually convincing, and increasingly personalized. They reference your name, your company, your colleagues, and sometimes details about your business that feel like they could only come from someone who knows you. They arrive from addresses that look almost identical to the real thing, and create urgency that makes you want to act before you think.
In a recent workshop hosted by Ekaru, Ann Westerheim and Linda joined Lincoln Vierhus to break down exactly how Business Email Compromise and phishing attacks work and why they are so effective against small businesses in greater Boston. You can watch the full workshop here.
One of the clearest takeaways from that conversation was this: the emails that cause the most damage are not the obvious ones, but the ones that look completely legitimate right up until the moment they are not.
So how do you actually tell the difference?
That Email From Your Bank Might Not Be From Your Bank
The display name on an email can say anything. An email can appear to come from "Microsoft Support" or your own CEO while the actual sending address is something completely unrelated. Most people never check and attackers are counting on that.
Before you respond to or act on any email, look at the full email address, not just the name displayed. Attackers register domains that are one character different from the real thing, swap letters that look similar like a lowercase L and an uppercase I, or add words like "support" or "security" to a familiar brand name. An email from microsoft-support-alert.com is not from Microsoft. An email from your.ceo.name@gmail.com is not from your CEO.
Legitimate Organizations Do Not Ask You to Act Before You Think
Phishing emails are not designed to inform you, they are designed to move you. Every element of a well-crafted phishing email, the urgency, the authority, the consequences of not acting, exists to get you to do something before your instincts have a chance to catch up.
If an email is pressuring you to click, call, confirm, or transfer before you have had time to think clearly about whether the request makes sense, that pressure itself is the red flag. Legitimate organizations rarely ask you to click a link to verify your account, confirm a payment, or provide login credentials in response to an unsolicited email. Any email that creates pressure to act immediately is worth slowing down on regardless of how legitimate it looks.
The Link That Looks Safe Might Be the One That Is Not
Attackers do not need you to visit an obviously suspicious website. They need you to visit one that looks completely legitimate right up until the moment your credentials are captured or your device is compromised. The difference between the real site and the fake one is often a single character in the URL that nobody checks.
Hovering over any link before clicking reveals the actual destination address at the bottom of your browser or email client. If it does not match the organization sending the email, do not click it. This habit takes two seconds and stops the majority of phishing attempts cold.
The Details Attackers Get Wrong Are the Ones Most People Miss
A busy inbox is an attacker's best friend. When you are moving fast, a subject line that does not quite match the email body, a salutation that uses your email address instead of your name, or formatting that is slightly off compared to legitimate communications from the same brand are easy to miss. They are much harder to miss when you make a deliberate habit of slowing down before acting on any email that asks you to do something unusual.
The question to ask is not just whether the email looks real, but whether this request makes sense coming from this person at this moment.
If Something Feels Off, It Probably Is
Attackers are skilled at creating emails that pass a quick glance but carry a subtle wrongness when you slow down and examine them. A request that does not fit the relationship, a tone that is slightly different from how a known contact normally writes, or a timing that does not make sense given where things stand.
Most people who fall for phishing attacks report afterwards that something felt slightly off but they acted anyway because the email looked professional and the request seemed plausible. That hesitation is worth listening to every single time.
When in doubt, verify through a separate channel. If you receive an email from your bank, your IT provider, or a colleague asking you to take an unusual action, call them directly using a number you already have, not one provided in the email, and confirm the request is legitimate before proceeding.
The Attack That Looks Like a Normal Email From Someone You Trust
Business Email Compromise does not arrive with a warning. It arrives looking like a routine message from your CEO, your accountant, your vendor, or your bank. It asks for something that is slightly unusual but not impossible. A wire transfer that needs to happen today, a change to payment details before an invoice goes out, or access to a file that someone urgently needs.
By the time the request is questioned the money is already gone or the access is already granted. For small businesses in greater Boston without formal verification processes for financial requests, this attack works because it exploits trust rather than technology.
In Ekaru's workshop, Lincoln Vierhus illustrated how these attacks unfold step by step and what makes them so effective against small businesses that do not have formal processes for verifying unusual financial requests. The answer is not complicated technology, but a simple verification habit applied consistently.
What Small Businesses in Greater Boston Should Do
The businesses that avoid these attacks are not the ones with the most sophisticated technology. They are the ones where every person on the team knows what to look for, feels confident enough to pause before acting, and knows exactly who to call when something does not feel right.
Does your team have that confidence right now? If you are not sure, that is worth finding out before an attacker finds out for you.
At Ekaru we help small businesses across Westford, Acton, Chelmsford, Lowell, and greater Boston build the security awareness and technical defences that reduce the risk of phishing and Business Email Compromise. From email filtering and security monitoring to staff training and incident response planning, we handle the protection so your team can focus on the work.
If you want to see exactly how these attacks work and what your business can do to stop them, our full workshop on Business Email Compromise and phishing is available now. Watch it at the link below and share it with your team.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4TdGcMg-eg
And if you want to know how well your current email security would hold up against a real attack, a free IT assessment is the fastest way to find out.