Reαd carefully: how to spot – and avoid – a homoglyph attack
Scam emails are increasingly using psychological tricks, such as using near-identical URLs like miсrosoft.com You’ve read the email carefully and it looks legitimate. The link it asks you to click on has none of the usual red flags: there are no weird numbers or extra parts to the URL. You feel safe to proceed. But if you had looked slightly closer you may have noticed something slightly wrong with one of the characters. Just as in the headline of this piece where instead of “a” we used the Cyri
AI summary
Scam emails are increasingly using psychological tricks, such as using near-identical URLs like miсrosoft.com
You’ve read the email carefully and it looks legitimate. The link it asks you to click on has none of the usual red flags: there are no weird numbers or extra parts to the URL. You feel safe to proceed.
But if you had looked slightly closer you may have noticed something slightly wrong with one of the characters. Just as in the headline of this piece where instead of “a” we used the Cyrillic “α”.
It just goes to show that the split-second decision you make when clicking a link is often the most vulnerable part of the whole security chain.”
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About this article
- Length
- 118 words · 1 min read
- Published
- September 20, 2026
- Byline
- Hilary Osborne
- Source
- The Guardian