I bet you have asked yourself the question numerous times if an email was legit or fake. I know that I did and I analyzed the email to find out if the sender was really the person or company that it claimed to be.

The software Trend Micro eMail ID which I spotted over at Raymonds blog aids the user under certain circumstances. The eMail Id tool is a browser add-on for Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox that supports several webmailers like Yahoo Mail, Gmail and Hotmail.

Email ID scans incoming mails from supported companies displaying a status icon afterwards which tells the user if the email is legit or fake. Moving the mouse over the icon reveals additional information about the email received.

Trend Micro eMail ID is an easy to use security tool that does not require configuration at all. It does have some limitations though. First, it only works with Firefox and Internet Explorer and only several webmailers plus Microsoft Outlook Express 6.0 and second it supports only US companies at the moment.

If you are from Europe for instance you will not find this tool that useful because you normally do not receive that many emails from those companies from the United States.

The interesting part is the analysis of the mail. He dissects every part of the message and of course takes a look at the email header as well. The analysis ends with an advice (which he puts at the beginning of his essay) which should be common sense nowadays.

1. You need effective technology to protect you from the many unscrupulous people out there on the Internet who want to damage your systems, scam you or generally subvert your computing resources for their own ends.

2. Security via technology alone is not sufficient to combat the cyber criminals who are out to get you, your business, and your computers. You need to be aware of what is going on around you and take control of the situation before you are compromised. Just as Ignorance of the law is no excuse, ignorance of your computing environment can also land you in deep trouble.

My personal suggestion for you is to switch to a secure email program if you are still using Microsoft outlook. Mozilla Thunderbird, Opera Email and many others are not attacked that often and have better options to improve security.

The suggestions that follow are all important, back then and today as well. Kissel suggests to turn of JavaScript to block that attack vector, block the loading of remote elements like images which can for instance be used for tracking purposes or expoits, use secure connections via SSL when retrieving and sending email, and viewing emails only in plain text and not HTML.