Take a breath before responding – Emails requesting action or having urgency have a high likelihood of being a scam

Any email indicating that you are behind in a payment, your membership/subscription requires attention, or you are the recipient of a gift, have a high likelihood of being a scam. I am constantly getting emails stating that my Costco membership needs attention NOW or it will be cancelled. Initially, I thought “Oh no, what happened? I need to get this fixed.”. However, after looking at the “from” email address carefully I realized it was not from Costco at all. Had I not paused before hitting reply to handle the “problem”, I would have given my personal information to an unknown party to use for who knows what? We are all busy, we all want to just check things off the list but take a breath before hitting reply.