Here’s a new spin in phishing attacks. The idea is to trick people into providing confidential data. This new technique is aimed at Gmail users. Here’s how it works:
- An email arrives in your Gmail inbox. It’s a genuine email addressed to you so Gmail won’t filter it out.
- The email was sent by someone called "customer care". This is enough to get most people’s attention.
- The email is well laid out with a link to your Gmail calendar. This is pretty special as far as spam goes. How did they get a valid link to a calendar entry in there? (Spammers found a way to place calendar entries in other people’s Gmail calendar).
- The email says:
VERIFY YOUR ACCOUNT (…)
This Email is from Gmail Customer Care and we are sending it to every Gmail Email User Accounts Owner for safety. we are having congestions due to the anonymous registration of Gmail accounts so we are shutting down some Gmail accounts and your account was among those to be deleted.We are sending you this email to so that you can verify and let us know if you still want to use this account. (…)
You will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.
* Username:
* Password:
It’s an attempt to get you to provide your username and password. If you see anything like that simply delete it.