Thanks. I've been getting emails that look official but on closer look they are not. I blocked the sender but I am still getting them so what good is blocking?

I have a garbage email account (that I use for things like this site, sorry) that gets garbage. My PayPal account has been suspended, click here, Social Security charge rejected, click here.

As you say, they're easy to identify because of the random domains shown as originating the messages. I send them to spam once in awhile but always ignore them. Just like the phone calls I used to get on my VOIP "landline".

Edit to add:

Google's Gmail service, which I use for my REAL email, seems to do an outstanding job of identifying and capturing bogus emails of all types. The kind of emails I get in the garbage account almost never appear in my real gmail account inbox. I can't remember the last time, it's been so long.

I do the same as Elmer; have a hotmail account for all things not personal that gets all the spam. I have an icloud account I use for personal and important business. It does a great job of catching spam; in fact I'm not sure I've ever gotten any. I did get an email from a friend telling me she'd changed her email account and was sending me a test email...I had no reason so suspect it, but turns out her account had been hacked and I did click on something. Ugh, I hated that I'd been tricked. No consequences that I found, but she did have to delete her whole account and start over. A real pain for her.

It's good to be warned, thanks.

Gosh, I am DULL. I almost never get any spam or phishing.

Either that or you don't know that you are getting them!

You can never be too diligent!

People absolutely can be too diligent, because that implies the need to be wary, concerned or have focused attention to this phenomenon. In between being diligent at one extreme and oblivious at the other is a big middle ground where I think most people should be.

The possibility of having a problem because of a bogus email trying to install malware, or trying to get sign-on information, or trying to do other types of nefarious things is very well known, easy to spot and easy to handle. The risk is quite low for those who are not oblivious.

If you receive an email that sounds ominous or is trying to alert you to a problem it says you need to act on, check the return address first. If you get an unrequested email with a link or a box to click on, don't. If there's an attachment, even if the return address is someone you know, don't open it before first checking with that person. Otherwise, just ignore it and move on.

This is no different than bogus phone calls purporting to be from the IRS or the Social Security administration that many get. They're obvious and while annoying, they're easy to deal with.

Remember that when you need to reset a password or validate your identity for a particular site, the way it works may be for you to be sent an email or message from that LEGITIMATE site you're interacting with. Such messages come in a minute or two and you know to expect them. Links contained in messages like that that you've just been alerted to, that arrive immediately or in a minute or two, are perfectly okay to click on.

FWIW, this was in my hotmail junk folder, which I scan daily because sometimes important items wind up there. Likely because I have the filter set to 'high', any address that's not in my contacts gets filtered - even when it's a trusted sender. There are also emails that I'd prefer go there than to my regular inbox - like notifications from social media sites and a number of newsletters. Legit notifications from credit card companies do wind up there from time to time.

Sure, sounds reasonable.

Sometimes people do things that make tasks that should be simple, difficult. My wife gets so many needless, garbage emails - from stores, from social media, from here there and everywhere, that she misses at least one important email, often more, every day. She thinks she "manages them" by spending 15 minutes or more every day deleting them (without reading). When I suggest she needs to instead Unsubscribe and stop signing up for things, she doesn't have time for that.

When I send her something by email (like forwarding a message) that I want her to see, I need to send a text message too, to be sure. Aargh.

Moral of the story - an easy way to simplify handling emails and avoiding the nefarious ones with the least amount of effort is to minimize the number of emails you get. Don't sign up for such things in your "good" email account, use a garbage one for such purposes. That way, on a sleepy morning when you're cruising through with one eye open instead of two, you won't make a miscue.

I get a text message from my CC company and when I do, I use the phone number on the back of my CC to call them to verify the text

Elmer, I learned many years ago from dealing with my MIL that complaints are most often not a request for a solution. A simple response of "that's a fixable problem" is sufficient.

I signed up for every kind of alert from a couple of credit card companies after missing payments because of glitches. That means I get text alerts, paper bills and emails from one of them.

graywings, I have a problem solver's disposition. See a problem, try to fix the problem or offer suggestions to do so. Not, see a problem, learn to live with the problem, offer best wishes or ignore the problem. I can dial it down.