In this article you’ll find 6 phishing email examples for employees. It will tell you all you need to know about the tactics hackers use to trick you in the workplace.
These are real phishing attempts that landed in actual employee inboxes, and every single one is annotated so you know what to watch out for.
By the time you finish reading, you’ll know how to spot a phishing attempt at work before it costs you or your company.
Whether you’re an employee who just received a suspicious email, a manager wanting to protect your team, or someone who simply wants to know what modern workplace phishing actually looks like: this is the only guide you need.
Why Hackers Go After Employees First
Employees, especially newer ones, form the best ”entry point” into an organization. With everything considered, employees are the weakest link. But why?
Humans Are Easier to Exploit Than Systems
Phishing is preferred over other methods of hacking, because it’s easier to trick a person than to crack a system.
Because of cognitive overload, urgency, authority, or fear, employees act before their instincts have a chance to catch up.
IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report confirms it: phishing, an attack that targets people, not systems, is now the single most common entry point for data breaches worldwide.
One Hacked Employee Could Bring Down an Entire Company
There are countless examples of attacks targeting employees first, to then wreak havoc on the business and its operations. These are the consequences that might result from breaches that begin by stealing employee credentials:
A Recent Real-Life Example of Potential Damage: the Marks & Spencer Breach Through Stolen Credentials
In early April 2025, British retail giant Marks & Spencer had a hiccup as far as the stability of the company was concerned.
M&S faced exploitation by ransomware as a result of a succesful cyberattack, where employee credentials were the entry point.
M&S confirmed that ransomware was deployed following a successful cyberattack in which attackers impersonated an M&S employee, tricked a third-party IT help desk into resetting credentials, and used those credentials to work their way into the company’s systems.
These were the consequences for Marks & Spencer:
- Lost £3.8 million per day during the downtime
- Customer data was stolen
- Company’s market value fell by +- £750 million
- About £350 million lost in profits
- Reputation received a hit
This is a great example of a very succesful phishing-like attack that had grave consequences for the company targeted by it. The starting point was gaining access through stealing the credentials of a single employee.
That single phone call became the entry point for one of the most disruptive retail Cyberattacks in British history. The point is that credential theft through phishing can cost a company millions upon millions in damages. Small businesses may not recover.
You can read more about the M&S breach here: https://www.trusona.com/blog/ms-scatteredspider-attack
How Hackers Get a Hold of Employee Email Addresses
There are different methods hackers use to find out the email addresses of a company’s employees. They include:
- Company website
- first name + company domain formula (company domain is easy to determine, then they try to add first names (and/or) last names to figure out an employee’s email address.)
- Employee credentials compromised by general breaches
- B2B data broker sites: building targeted lists of employees that sales teams also use
The takeaway? By the time a phishing email lands in your inbox, the attacker at minimum has your email address. In many cases, they already know your name and who you work for.
A Quick Note About Names In Phishing Emails
Emails you suspect as phishing that have a general greeting and which do not mention your name, are typically easier to recognize as phishing. The very fact that you suspect it of phishing and it doesn’t greet you with your first name can be an indication that it is a mass phishing attempt. They just send it to the most amount of email addresses they have at their disposal.
However, when an email does greet you with your name, you have to be wary. It is possible that you are being targeted by a phishing attack that is specifically designed for you. This dynamic of name vs. no name is something you need to keep in mind when looking for phishing emails.
Now onto the phishing email examples meant for employees that are common but dangerous.
1. The Fake Legal Threat
3 strikes and you’re out. At least, that’s what the hacker hopes to accomplish.
- Shortened link: always be wary and suspicious of any (shortened) links in a workplace environment. You can hover over the link to reveal the real destination URL. That URL is where you’d actually go to if you clicked it. If there is any doubt or confusion regarding any links: don’t click them.
- Urgency: ”Send a short reply within 24 hours” is a classic urgency trigger. An official or legitimate email of this kind would not make a 24 hour ultimatum through email.
- Legitimacy fabrication: A long, specific looking number creates the illusion of an official case that is pending. It is a weak attempt to look ”real.”
This email intends to exploit an employee’s fear of (legal) consequences to pressure an employee into clicking a shortened link that has its destination concealed. Through legitimacy and urgency they try to have an employee make a decision before they consider it could be phishing.
2. Financial Request From Higher Up
If you pay close attention to the email above, you notice there is no actual phishing link in there.
The hacker tries to engage in conversation with an employee, impersonating a colleague, preferably somebody higher up in the company.
It is common for these ”conversational” phishing attempts to result in: wire transfers, gift card fraud, credential harvesting/an account takeover. This would happen later down the line when the hacker has established back and forth contact with the recipient.
- Domain contains an extra S: this is a lookalike domain designed to trick the recipient it is the actual and official mailaddress. This is spotted quite easily.
- Addresses recipient by first name: personalisation of an email tends to help in lowering the guard of the victim.
- Financial request: A vague financial request because it doesn’t request anything specific. No legitimate executive would ask it this way.
- Sent by known colleague: Isaac is most likely someone Aubrey would recognize, whether he is a colleague or superior. This name is not random and has been researched beforehand by the attacker.
- Sent from iPhone: Informal communication from a superior increases compliance in many employees. It feels like the boss contacted you directly through an ”unofficial” channel, instead of normal ones, because the boss ”trusts you.”
3. Employees Phished Through Dropbox
- Official Dropbox Address: this is not necessarily a tactic employed by the phisher, but it is important to be aware of. Anytime a file is shared through dropbox, the recipient will see the no-reply@dropbox.com email address. That doesn’t automatically mean you should open or download files.
- Unofficial email domain: the email address of the user that sends the file is a free mailbox. It is not using an email address with the company domain it it, which gives away it is unofficial and not legitimate.
- Unexpected document: The email is likely unsolicited and appears ”out of the blue.” That alone should raise doubt and suspicion in employees.
Again, this is a phishing scam through a legitimate service. Dropbox is legitimate. The official notification through email which you see above is supposed to happen. But the sender making use of it is fraudulent and wants you to download a malicious file within Dropbox.
So in other words, the hackers in question are using Dropbox as a vehicle for their fraudulent practices.
4. The Wire Transfer
Unlike the financial request that we talked about in #2, this email immediately requests a wire transfer on first contact; not later down the line.
The following email immediately raises suspicion as it is not a very convincing phishing attempt.
- Wrong domain: this is a common tactic used to trick recipients that are not paying close attention. The ”o” is actually a zero. Recognizing this immediately exposes this as a phishing attempt.
- Greeting that uses first name: Addressing the employee with their first name adds a sense of trust or comfort. They want you to think you’re being addressed by a colleague or superior.
- Extreme urgency, exclamation mark: ”before the end of the day” is to minimize the time between reading and acting. It spurs the employee to act now, ”or else.”
- No legitimate payment instruction: this email only contains a bank number and a raw dollar amount, nothing else. The ”enclosed vendor banking information” is hardly satisfactory. You’d expect more information.
5. Your Next Career Move
This email fooled a lot of people. The branding is clean and the story fairly believable. It is seemingly an email where Coca Cola reaches out with a legit job offer. The phishing attempt is not glaringly obvious:
This email is designed and crafted to make you feel chosen. Upon further inspection it becomes clear that this is a phishing attempt.
- Real domain, no complete preview: like the Dropbox example, this email finds it roots in the official platform: Recruitee.com. Therefore, the sender domain ends with Recruitee.com. But the actual email address isn’t fully visible, only partially. The odds are very high that that mail address does not belong to Coca Cola.
- Name absent: a name being absent can indicate a mass phishing attempt. They are ”truly inspired by your ability to blend creatively,” but forgot to include your name. That is contradictory.
- ”Official” footer for legitimacy: to add a sense of legitimacy the hacker copied official company information to include in the footer.
The button likely leads to a real Recruitee page. The attack is what that page asks you to submit: your credentials, your employment history, and your personal details. The platform is just the delivery vehicle, and Coca Cola is not behind the wheel of this request, similar to the Dropbox example.
6. Your Password Is About to Expire
This one definitely won’t fool everyone, and admittedly, this is the weakest of the phishing attempts in this article.
But it lands in more employee inboxes than any other phishing email on this list, and on a busy Friday afternoon, it fools enough people.
Take a look:
- Sender address isn’t Microsoft: noreply@algo-scl.com is obviously not noreply@microsoft.com. Right off the bat you can tell that it is a feeble phishing attempt because of this.
- Urgency: Importance: high. It tries to create a sense of urgency so that employees who receive this email act before they think.
- Generic greeting: Microsoft knows your name. A legitimate notification or email by Microsoft would’ve included it.
- Different color than what MS uses: Microsoft doesn’t use yellow for their buttons. Very often, if not always, Microsoft uses blue.
- More urgency: Again another warning which is trying to create panic in the recipient.
If You Spot a Phishing Email, Report It Quickly
It is important to notify your IT department and manager after you received a phishing email. They can use that information to warn colleagues, but also to help them determine if the attack is aimed specifically at your company, or that it is a broader phishing attempt.
It improves spamfilters over time: by reporting phishing emails you are providing AI tools the data they need to detect malicious patterns.
This can all help prevent serious damage. Whether you think an email is suspicious or if you verifiably clicked a link and entered credentials, it doesn’t matter. You should report it anyway.
Hoxhunt’s Phishing Trend Report states the following:
The report found a $1.2 million cost difference between breaches that were identified and contained before or after 200 days of initiation. The faster you can detect an incident, the faster you can limit the damage and prevent a catastrophic breach.
The faster each employee can detect and report a phishing attempt, the more damage by a potential breach is limited.
Why You Should Report a Phishing Attempt in Outlook
In addition to reporting phishing internally, it is recommended that you also report the phishing in Outlook. But please keep in mind that it may do little beyond sending information to Microsoft.
However, if Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is configured, it is very helpful for your colleagues that are in charge of the IT infrastructure.
This is because every email reported by an employee can be reviewed and investigated in the Microsoft Defender portal. In other words, admins can review these emails and possibly classify them as phishing.
From there, it is also possible to ”hunt down” this email, automatically flagging and removing it in inboxes of other colleagues.
How To Report Phishing in Outlook
Please read our article on the location of the phishing button in Outlook: Where Is the Report Phishing Button in Outlook 365? (Quick Guide)
This piece of content covers where you can find the reporting phishing button in Outlook, for the Windows Application, Classic Outlook, but also the webbased version.
6 Phishing Email Examples for Employees: conclusion
These 6 phishing email examples for employees give you an insight into how hackers try to scam employees, steal accounts, data, and identities — and ultimately breach the companies they work for.
Want to make sure you never fall for one of these? Get your free Anti-Phishing Checklist below to quickly identify and avoid phishing attempts aimed at you or your colleagues.
Invoice fraud is another common attack hackers like to target employees with. We have a good example in our comprehensive article on how to avoid phishing scams: a step-by-step guide.
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