OldSchool SEO

Google is the Latest Target of Phishing Email Scams

Written on March 26, 2008 – 1:38 pm | by oldschool

In times past, the PayPal website was a highly targeted in email Phishing scams where emails were randomly sent to people that may of may not have a PayPal account. More often than not, the person who recognized PayPal would ofter respond not noting the actual URL they were being directed to and give up critical information which made them victims of identity theft of some cases.

Other organizations such as banks have been targeted, and apparently I have accounts at lots of back that are trying verify my account ownership. Recently, I have started to receive a few of those related targeting Google AdWords account holders. Even worse, to the untrained user (or if you have your guard down even just a little), this one could fool you. Why? The redirect address incorporates a sub domain string that initially leads you to think you are going to google.adwords.com, but if you looks closely, this is the actual URL you are being directed to: http://adwords.google.com.frefo9.cn/select/Login/ instead of http://adwords.google.com/select/login which is pointing to a Chinese (.cn) domain.

Here is the message in it’s entirety as emailed to me sent from “Google AdWords [adwords-noreply@google.com]“:

This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does
not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.
——————————————————————————–

Dear Google AdWords Customer,

Please sign in to your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login , and update your billing information.
Your account will be reactivated as soon as you update your payment information.
Your ads will show immediately if you decide to pay for clicks via credit
or debit card. If you decide to pay by direct debit, we may need to receive
your signed debit authorization before your ads start running,
depending on your location.
If you choose bank transfer, your ads will show as soon as we receive your
first payment.

We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,

———————————————————————————-

The Google AdWords Team

Take a little extra time to verify any and all URL’s from anyone allegedly trying to validate your accounts. These scam artists are getting more and more clever.