Remove “UPS Delivery Notice” email

The “UPS Delivery Notice” email falls into the phishing scam category. The email is disguised as a notification from the delivery service UPS and informs you that your package is scheduled for delivery tomorrow. The email has a link to more information about the shipment. However, clicking on the link will lead you to a site that does not currently work. We cannot be certain about what the intention behind this phishing campaign is, but it’s likely intended to phish either personal and payment card information or email login credentials. Whatever the case may be, the email’s contents should be disregarded, and the email itself should be deleted.

 

 

This “UPS Delivery Notice” email is a very standard phishing attempt and has the usual signs pointing to it being malicious. It has an eye-catching subject line of “New mail on the way to you! Your UPS package is coming soon”, and it will certainly attract the attention of both people who frequently receive parcels and those who have not ordered anything recently. The email does not provide a lot of information. It simply states that your package will be delivered tomorrow and that you can check the shipment details by clicking on the “Track Your Package” button.

If you were to click on the button, you would be taken to a site that does not load at the time of writing. This makes it difficult to know what kind of information the malicious actors behind this email were after. It’s likely that you are supposed to be redirected to a site that asks for your personal information, including your full name, home address, phone number, etc. The site may also ask you to pay a small delivery fee and type in your payment card information.

Another scenario may be that you would be redirected to a site that asks you to log in to your email account to view the information. If you were to type in the information, your password would be stolen by malicious actors. This would allow them to access your email account and potentially all other accounts connected to it.

Email account login credentials are very valuable to malicious actors because users usually do not change accounts for years and do not delete emails, which means they contain a lot of personal information.

The full “UPS Delivery Notice” email is below:

Subject: New mail on the way to you! Your UPS package is coming soon

UPS Delivery Notice

Dear Valued Customer,

We’re excited to let you know your package is scheduled for delivery tomorrow.
Please see your shipment details below.

Tracking Number: –
Expected Delivery: Tomorrow
Recipient: –

Track Your Package

For questions or support, please visit ups.com.

Thank you for choosing UPS.

How to identify malicious emails

Some malicious emails are more obvious than others. The “UPS Delivery Notice” email is a very obvious one. The very first line immediately identifies it as malicious. The email greets you with a “Dear Valued Customer”, and generic words like “Valued Customer” are usually a sign of a malicious email. Emails from legitimate senders whose services you use will always address you by name. Generic words like User, Member, Customer, etc., as well as skipping the greeting altogether, are often used because malicious actors do not have access to more personal information like your name.

The sender’s email address can also tell you a lot about whether it’s safe to open the email and interact with it. Thus, the sender’s email address should be one of the first things you check when you receive an unsolicited email that asks you to do something. Many malicious emails originate from random, suspicious-looking addresses that are relatively easy to identify. For instance, the “UPS Delivery Notice” email clearly does not come from UPS, as the domain does not match the one used by UPS. However, more advanced phishing attempts may use seemingly legitimate email addresses, which is why it’s important that users look more closely and research whether the address matches the real sender’s one.

Another common feature of malicious emails is poor grammar and spelling, as well as awkward phrasing. These emails are often riddled with mistakes and lack the professional quality expected from reputable companies like UPS. While the “UPS Delivery Notice” email does not include sufficient text to have enough mistakes, its overall presentation still appears unprofessional.

Finally, even the most convincing phishing emails can be detected by carefully analyzing the contents rather than reacting impulsively. For example, if a parcel delivery email requests your payment card information, this should immediately raise suspicion and be treated as a red flag. Or if you did not order anything recently and received such an email.