Just earlier today, I wrote about the phishing threat bubbling over at microblogging web community Twitter. That's right, despicable phishers have been sending out phony email notifications to Twitterers, prompting them to visit a link included in the body of the email... the link leads to a phony Twitter site where visitors are asked to input their login and password information. And it's all downhill from there...
Last Tuesday Chris Crum reported with webpronews.com that phishers are also operating under the guise of Google Calendar event invitations.
"Be wary of any invitations that ask for your password," Crum warned, explaining that phishers are sending out legitimate-looking emails from addresses such as customerservice1234@gmail.com (the digits vary with each message).
Crum considerately included a snippet from one of the scam emails... have you recently received an email from "Google" that resembles the following?
"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 so that you can verify and let us know if you still want to use this account."
Verify smerify... the email goes on to prompt readers to input their Gmail username and password. And it's all downhill from there.
Spammers, scammers, hackers and phishers have posed a problem for years. Identity theft has almost become a common term in our web surfing vocabulary. Thankfully, these troubling encounters have encouraged browsers to take extra caution when opening emails from unknown senders or submitting their personal information to suspect websites. Still, as Crum laments, "These phishers still manage to trick people."
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