Watch out for unexpected Google Docs, the newest phishing scam
Emails containing links to a Google Document shared by people you know might be a part of a phishing scam that spread quickly on the internet on Wednesday, according to CBS.
Staff from multiple media outlets received these emails that look almost identical to the ones Google Drive sends when a person shares a document. Whether accounts belonging to government officials have been scammed or not is unknown, but at least one Senate office warned political staff about the phishing attempt.
Many of the emails include the address in “[email protected]” in the “send to” section. People complained on Twitter about the scam:
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? If someone you know seems to be very eager to share a Google Doc with you today, it might be a phishing attempt. Don't click it! ? pic.twitter.com/y0taEPeccT
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) May 3, 2017
@zeynep Just got this as well. Super sophisticated. pic.twitter.com/l6c1ljSFIX
— Zach Latta (@zachlatta) May 3, 2017
If people click on the fraudulent link, they are brought to a Google page where they are asked to offer „Google Docs” full access to all their Google accounts, which gives hackers an oppotunity to go through their email and private documents.
It is not known who is behind this phishing attempt. Google said in a statement sent to CBS News that by late Wednesday afternoon it had disabled accounts associated with the phishing attempt.
“We have taken action to protect users against an email impersonating Google Docs, and have disabled offending accounts,” the company said. “We’ve removed the fake pages, pushed updates through Safe Browsing, and our abuse team is working to prevent this kind of spoofing from happening again. We encourage users to report phishing emails in Gmail.”
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