• Look at the email address – often, a long string of alphanumeric characters before the @ sign will be a dead giveaway that the email is spam.

• Look at what comes after the @ sign. If the email is from a respected company or well-established Web site, it will certainly not have an email address like [name of business here]@[free email service provider here].com. Business and established Web sites would have their name dot com after the @ sign.

• Look for a sense of urgency within the body of email. If it is asking you to do something right away or within X hours, it is a good indication of spam mail.

• Look for links within the body of the message. If it is a well-respected, highly used business or Web site, a legitimate email would simply tell you to log into your account to fix something, not click on a link.

• Look for grammatical and spelling errors within the email message. Emails from genuine sources will not have such errors.

• Look for greetings that are generic. If it says something along the lines of "Dear Valued Customer" or "Dear [company name] Member," it is usually spam.

• Look for an email asking for personal information. Banks, eBay, PayPal and other online services make it very clear that they will NEVER ask you for your personal information, especially over email.