Phishing Tops FBI Reports; OptMsg Says Stop Scams at the Inbox Door

OptMsg’s patent-pending opt-in technology lets only approved senders reach the inbox, with no password to steal. Plus: a free Lock Down Your Inbox checklist.

DETROIT, MI, UNITED STATES, October 20, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Every day, Americans receive emails pretending to come from banks, delivery companies, healthcare providers, and even family members. Some look so convincing that even cautious people can be fooled.

Phishing was the most-reported cybercrime in America last year. The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report counted 191,561 phishing complaints, more than any other crime. People age 60 and over reported $7.7 billion in losses, more than any other age group.

Today, for Cybersecurity Awareness Month, OptMsg, an opt-in email service, calls on families to stop scam email at the door instead of trying to spot every fake, and has released Lock Down Your Inbox, a free checklist that shows how.

Spotting Every Fake Is a Losing Game

Most email safety advice puts the work on the reader: check the sender, hover over the link, look for typos. In most inboxes, anyone who has an address can try to put a message in front of its owner. Spam filters judge each message by what it says, and a well-made fake can get through. It takes only one convincing email to empty a bank account.

Why OptMsg

OptMsg was designed specifically for consumers around three fundamental principles: Simple. Private. Secure.

Simple: OptMsg users see only messages from people and businesses they have chosen to hear from. Users control who gets in: only approved senders can reach the inbox. All other messages automatically go to Trash, where they’re available for review before being deleted after 30 days.

Adding a new sender is quick and easy, without complicated settings or spam filters. OptMsg also uses Community Recommendations to highlight potentially important messages from senders a user hasn’t approved, helping ensure legitimate communications aren’t overlooked.

The result is a cleaner, more manageable inbox without constantly deleting spam or clicking unsubscribe links.

Private: Email holds personal conversations, financial information, medical appointments, and other details that deserve protection. OptMsg believes private communications should stay private.

OptMsg doesn’t read emails to target advertising. Personal information isn’t collected and sold to advertisers. Messages exchanged between OptMsg users are encrypted. With OptMsg, email is a communication service, not an advertising product.

Secure: Most email services try to determine whether incoming messages are dangerous. OptMsg takes a different approach by keeping unapproved senders out of the inbox altogether. Security also extends to how users access their accounts. Instead of traditional passwords, OptMsg uses passkeys, allowing users to sign in using facial recognition, fingerprints, or their device PIN. This eliminates the traditional account password that criminals often attempt to steal through phishing attacks and data breaches.

Together, these protections make email safer without making it more complicated.

Rethinking Email Security

“For years, we’ve coached people to be careful about which emails they open and which links they click,” said Matt Dobbie, co-founder of OptMsg. “But scammers have become incredibly sophisticated. We asked a different question: Why should a stranger be able to put an email in your inbox in the first place? With OptMsg, they can’t unless you approve them.”

Ryan LaMirand, co-founder of OptMsg, believes privacy and security shouldn’t require technical expertise. “People shouldn’t have to sacrifice their privacy or become cybersecurity experts just to use email,” said LaMirand. “We built OptMsg to give consumers something straightforward: an inbox they control, personal information that isn’t sold, and security that’s easy to use. That’s what Simple. Private. Secure. means to us.”

The Free Checklist

Lock Down Your Inbox lists 10 steps in plain language, prints on one page, and is written to share with parents and grandparents. Many of the steps, such as checking for data breaches and turning on two-step sign-in, help any email account. Five of the ten are built into OptMsg from the start, including the last and most important one: choosing who can reach the inbox.

OptMsg works on the web, iPhone and Android. New users can forward their current email to a new @optmsg.com address and move over at their own pace. More about the private, opt-in email service is at optmsg.com.

About OptMsg

OptMsg is a private, opt-in email service from Michigan. Only people a user approves can reach the Inbox; everything else goes to Trash. OptMsg was co-founded by Ryan LaMirand and Matt Dobbie and is accredited by the Better Business Bureau with an A+ rating.

Ryan LaMirand
OptMsg
947-517-7585
press@optmessage.com

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