A couple of days ago, I received an email which appeared to be from a friend who lives just a few blocks away.

The subject line: “Need A Favor !!!”

A brief message followed:

Hi,

I hope you are well. I need quick assistance from you I’d appreciate it if you could email me back when you get this.

Thank you!

It didn’t take me too long to confirm my suspicion that it was a scam. I later learned that if you responded, the scammer, still posing as a friend, asked you to buy and send one or more Apple iTunes gift cards.

Here’s how I confirmed it was a scam.

I first looked at the sender’s email address, and checked it against prior emails from my friend. The address was correct.

But the message was strange. It didn’t greet me by name, and wasn’t signed. And I couldn’t see what sort of favor my friend would want that she wouldn’t be able to just ask for directly.

So I took one simple step.

Find and click on the little upside-down triangle next to the email address at the top of the email. That opens a window with additional information. I’ve blacked out my friend’s name and email, but you’ll get the idea.

At the top, it showed my friend’s correct email address at aol.com as the source of the email (From), which was repeated below on the line labeled “To”.

But in between was the key line, labeled “Reply-to”.

The address there was a slightly changed from my friend’s address, and it was a gmail address instead of the original aol.

The subtle change in the reply to address was something like this (I’ll use a dummy address as an example).

Correct address: yourfriend@aol.com

As shown in “Reply-to”: yourffriennd@gmail.com.

If you weren’t expecting anything, you might not notice the reply-to address was different from my friend’s actual email address.

But the subtle change showed replies would be going to a scammer who had set up that alternative email account.

So when things don’t look quite right, check closely. Protect yourself online.