Phishers Are Targeting Google AdWords Accounts

Writing by Pay Per Click Journal on Saturday, May 31, 2008 Leave a comment

Members of eBay and PayPal.com have been targets for phishing e-mails for several years now. I’ve even received an e-mail from a phishing scammer to an e-amil address for which I didn’t have a PayPal account. They’re so easy to spot now that I wonder why anything thinks they can get away with. I guess it’s because they do.

But members of Google AdWords now have to be on the looking for the phishing e-mails as well. According to PPC Hero, phishers have been sending out e-mails to Google AdWords customers:

Recently, there have been reports that AdWords users have received fraudulent emails that appear to be from Google – but they are not. These fraudulent emails (otherwise known as “phishing emails”) ask users to update their billing information, edit their account information, review a disapproved ad, or accept new AdWords terms and conditions.

Know this: These are fake e-mails. Google AdWords will not send you an e-mail asking you to verify your account information. They have no need to. That’s why they have cookies. They’ll instantly recognize you when you land on the website because you’ve been there before (if you do not delete your cookie).

Phishing is a scam. E-mailers acquire a list of e-mail addresses that have accounts – and in some cases do not even acquire e-mail address, they just perform a mass spam campaign – at a large recognizable brand and ask them to login to their accounts to verify some information. But the site that you actually go to and enter your personal, private information is a site that looks like the one that you are a member, but it isn’t. It’s another website altogether and if you enter your personal information the bad guys will take it and do you some real financial damage. Don’t let them.

You can protect your Google AdWords account by not responding to these messages. Delete them. In fact, set up a rule in your e-mail application to send those e-mails to junk mail, but don’t make that rule be about the e-mail address the mail is from, the domain name listed in the e-mail, or the term “Google AdWords.” Instead, set up your rule to trigger when a certain key phrase inside of the body of the e-mail is found, but make sure it’s not some generic phrase that could be found in any e-mail. Make it a phrase that could only appear in the phishing e-mail from someone posing as Google AdWords. That way, when that specific e-mail comes through it will go straight to your junk mail folder and you won’t have to worry about being snookered by phishers.

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