Phishing Simulation - 113 Email Examples To Identify Phishing Attacks

If you follow this blog regularly, you know that it is no secret that we spend a lot of time writing about how to identify and protect against phishing attacks.  A big part of staying safe from phishing attacks is to take a serious approach to running phishing simulations that give your team a very practical opportunity to test their skills at identifying safe versus unsafe emails.

But, what makes a great phishing simulation email?  Below we'll share the key factors that make phishing simulation emails effective, and our favorite 113 phishing simulation emails that we use with our clients.

3 Crucial Factors for Phishing Simulation Emails

A phishing simulation email that becomes a terrific learning experience for your team needs the following to be successful:

1. Sender Relevance: the most effective phishing campaigns (and simulations) that we've seen, are ones that claim to be from vendors/partners/people that your team expects to hear from.  Does your team use Google Suite?  A phishing simulation claiming to be from Google Suite will have a higher "Sender Relevance" to your team, than an account alert email out-of-the-blue from Microsoft Office 365 if that is not a product your team uses.
2. Contextually Relevant Call-to-Action: the call-to-action needs to be an action that your team would plausibly be asked to do, by the highly relevant sender.  If your team uses Avis rental cars when they travel, a well-timed survey from Avis is plausible.  So, a phishing simulation that asks team members to click through to sign into their Avis account to fill out a survey, would meet the "contextually relevant" bar.
3. Interplay with Training:  how do you like the idea of running a phishing simulation, with no training before, after, or during?  We don't like the idea at all.  The best phishing simulations have a strong tie-in with training.  How?  We advise most of our clients to run an online / on-demand security awareness training initiative shortly before or after the phishing simulation (opinions and situations differ), and to have a landing page for users who "fall for" (click on) the phishing simulation.  Not one that makes the user feel bad -- one that educates on what about the email should have seemed suspicious enough to hold off on clicking.

With that context now set, let's look at some real phishing simulation email topics that we use with our clients at Havoc Shield.

113 of Our Favorites

Here are our favorites.  This isn't a complete list of phishing simulation emails that we use with our clients, but it's a representative sample that should give you a flavor for the types of emails that we believe to be effective.

1. Active Directory Password Reset
2. Adobe Password Reset
3. ADP Password Reset
4. AGL Energy Electricity Disconnect Notice
5. Alaska Airlines Password Expired
6. Alitalia Free Ticket
7. ANZ Customer Service Confirmation Request
8. Apple Confirm Account
9. Apple YouTube Red Confirmation
10. AT&T Order Confirmation
11. Atlassian Account Locked
12. Australia Post Ground Post Delivery Exception
13. Avis Free Rental
14. Avis Survey
15. Banana Republic Gift Card
16. Bank of America Strange Purchase Activity
17. Bank of England Account Reset
18. Bank of Ireland New Authentication Process
19. Best Buy Reset
20. Bigpond/Telstra Service Suspension
21. BoA Wire Transfer
22. Carfax Report
23. CDC Health Alert
24. CenturyLink Account Locked
25. Chase Payment Past Due
26. Chase Secure Message
27. Cigna New Benefits
28. Cisco Webex Verify Account
29. Citi Card Payment
30. Coinbase New Deposit
31. Commonwealth Bank Account Locked
32. Commonwealth Bank Verify Disabled Account
33. (removed)
34. Craigslist Password Reset
35. Credit Karma Reset
36. DocuSign COVID Forms
37. Dominos Gift Card
38. DoneDeal Password Reset
39. DropBox Password Reset
40. e-SignPackage: Closing Documents
41. eBay Credit
42. Energia Past Due Bill
43. Event Tickets Download
44. Evernote Offer
45. Experian Credit Update
46. Experian Free Credit Monitoring
47. Facebook Account Locked
48. Geico Payment Alert
49. GitHub Account Compromised
50. Gmail Password Change
51. GoDaddy Account Past Due
52. GoFundMe Campaign
53. Google Security Alert
54. Google Security Issue
55. Google Suite Offer
56. Holiday Inn Express Survey
57. Kohls Gift Card
58. LinkedIn Invitation
59. LogMeIn Failed Login Attempt
60. LogMeIn Update phish
61. Lyft Free Credit
62. Macys Account Locked
63. Marriott Account Compromised
64. Marriott Hotels Free Stay
65. Microsoft Account Compromised
66. Microsoft Office 365 Mailbox Shutdown
67. Microsoft Office 365 Password Expired
68. Microsoft Teams Added Notification
69. Mint Credit Score Dropped
70. Mint Purchase Alert
71. Namecheap Free Domain
72. Netflix Account On Hold
73. Netflix Account Reset
74. New Company Policy: Communicable Disease Management Policy
75. Newegg Free Gift Card
76. Norwegian Air Free Flight
77. OKCupid Matches
78. OneDrive Shared Document: Bonus payments and other reimbursements
79. OneDrive Shared Document: New Project response
80. Paypal Payment Received
81. Paypal Unusual Log In Activity
82. Pinterest Fresh Pins
83. Salesforce Account Locked
84. Service Desk Quarantined Mail
85. Skype new voicemail
86. Spotify Password Reset
87. Strava Account Locked
88. SunTrust online banking unusual activity
89. Telstra Bill Arrival Notification
90. Telstra Refund Notification
91. Tesco Account Compromised
92. (removed)
93. (removed)
94. Twitter New Follower
95. Uber Free Credit
96. UPS Account Locked
97. UPS Delivery Notice
98. UPS In Transit Notification
99. Venmo Payment
100. Verizon Account Verification
101. Vueling Flight Cancelled
102. Walmart Free Credit
103. Webex Invitation
104. Wells Fargo Insufficient Funds
105. Wells Fargo Security Alert
106. WHO Consumer Stimulus Package
107. WHO Solidarity Response
108. WHO Virus Awareness Safety Measures
109. WHO WFH Grant
110. YouTube Account Locked
111. Zillow Alert
112. Zoom Account Suspension
113. Zoom Missed Meeting

Want us to run a phishing simulation for your team, as part of our broader security awareness training offering?  We're standing by to help.