Not a day goes by that I don’t get some sort of scam or phishing email, but lately it seems to increasing. I guess all those scammers are looking to buy a Porshe for the holidays. I’ve received phishing emails that are spoofing (using another company’s identity) Facebook, MySpace, the IRS, and today Google Adwords. Below is the email I got regarding Adwords (my comments are in red):
From: Google AdWords
To: This email doesn’t have my name or email address in the “To” field which means it was bulk sent through blind carbon copy. Whenever Google wants to talk to me, they send an email directly to me).
Subject: Courtesy reminder
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:47:40 -0800
This is a courtesy reminder that your Google AdWords account needs to be verified.
In order to receive uninterrupted service, please verify your information immediately.
To verify your account, please click the link below and proceed to the login page:
https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin This URL actually goes to Google-xb.com which is not a legitimate Google site. (When the cursor hovers over the URL from my email, the actual URL is shown at the bottom of my browser) .
We thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Please understand that this is a security measure intended to help protect you and your account.
Sincerely, Google AdWords
This scheme is trying to get the login information for my AdWords Account. Once it has that, it can do all sort of things such as run ads that I would pay for and even steal my payment information.
To stay safe from phishing, NEVER click on links in email to go to a password protected account. Even if the email seems legit, don’t click on the link in the email. Instead, open your browser, type in the URL to the site (not the URL in the email) and log in from there.
Also consider whether or not the organization would actually have your email. Companies aren’t going to have your email unless you gave it to them. They don’t go out to find it so they can contact you. So if you bank at Bank of America, but never gave it your email, then any email saying its from Bank of America is probably not legit.
