HEY YOU 👋🏽

Ever gotten an email that looked real but made your gut say “something’s off”?

That wasn’t your paranoia. That was your instinct catching a fake imposter.

From AI-generated videos to imposters in your inbox… Fakes are everywhere now

Most people can’t tell the difference and get scammed on a daily basis.

🧡 Let’s fix that:

📩 1. Fake Emails

Scammers love pretending to be brands, bosses, or banks.

❌ What to watch for:

• Email address doesn’t match the display name
  (usually will have a string of numbers on the email address)

• Weird grammar, random spacing, random suspicious fonts

• Bad / re-routed links
  (hover first: real link it’s leading to appears on the bottom left corner of your screen)

• Urgent language like “Act now!” or “Verify immediately”

✔️ What to do:

• Google the actual sender’s domain
  (Eg. SUS LINK: chase.org.verify.com-.net)

• Look for security markers like “[secure]” or verified signatures

• When in doubt: call the person or log in manually through the real website

🧠 2. AI Deepfakes

That video of a celebrity endorsing a meme coin? Might be 100% AI.

❌ What to watch for:

• Off lip-syncing or glitchy eyes

• Odd intonation or robotic movements

• Background noise that doesn’t match the scene

• “Too perfect” looking visuals

• Weird hand / leg movements (or even heads that turn 360 😐️)

✔️ What to do:

• Reverse image/video search the footage

• Check if trusted media sources have covered it

• Google it (I know…. weird)

• Assume any “urgent message” from a public figure = fake until proven otherwise
  

📱 3. Social Media Doppelgänger

Fake accounts aren’t just bots anymore. They’re humans pretending to be you.

❌ What to watch for:

• Handles that look like yours with one small change (like 0 instead of O, underscore at the end, one extra hidden letter)

• Recent account creation, barely any real engagement

• Profile page full of “reposted content” from an eerily similar account (yeah they repost the original creator’s content to “appear” to be them to someone not paying attention)

• DMing your followers to “invest in crypto” or “support a cause”

✔️ What to do:

• Report and block instantly

• Notify the person they are impersonating if anything

• If it’s you, post a warning to your real followers before damage spreads

Fakes are getting more and more convincing.

But you’re smarter than them because you’re reading this 😉 

❥ You don’t need to be paranoid.
❥ You just need to pay attention.

Stay Cautious. Stay Vigilant.
Stay Skeptical. Stay Safe.

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That’s it for this edition of Explained Without Fluff.

Hope this helped. See you on the next one.
— Auny 🧡