Warning! GMAIL phishing scam!

RealBlackStuff

Posts: 6,450   +3
Warning! THIS IS A PHISHING SCAM! Do NOT react upon it!

This morning I received the following FALSE email,
titled Account Alert from someone who pretends to be admin@gmail.com

Dear Valued Member,

According to our terms of services, you will have to confirm your e-mail by the following link or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.

http://www.yourUserID@gmail.com/confirm.php?email=gmail.com

After following the instructions in the sheet, your account will not be interrupted and will continue as normal.

Thanks for your attention to this request. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,Gmail Security Department

Warning! THIS IS A PHISHING SCAM! Do NOT react upon it!
 
This is taken from Wikipedia.

In computing, phishing (also known as carding and spoofing) is a form of social engineering, characterised by attempts to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business in an apparently official electronic communication, such as an email or an instant message. The term phishing arises from the use of increasingly sophisticated lures to "fish" for users' financial information and passwords.

Hope this helps.

P.S Thanks for the info RBS.

Regards Howard :) :)
 
I receive an e-mail from this person (admin@gmail.com), but not with this message, in the subject was writing: YOU WON $500! Gmail congratulates you!

in the mail he put this:

CONGRATULATIONS!

YOU WON $500!


Gmail gives members random cash prizes. Today, your account is randomly selected as the one of 12 top winners accounts who will get cash prizes from us. Please click the link below and follow instructions on our web site. Your money will be paid directly to your e-gold, PayPal, StormPay or MoneyBookers account.

Click here to get your prize:

http://www.gmail.com/members/prizes.php?sid=a3n92dj2d3&rd=us&id=23018392384378&uid=2e5a4h43u2r3u5y1c3&id=28403934224345345

Sincerely,
The Gmail.com staff
Gmail.com http://www.gmail.com


SO, be careful with these e-mails from (admin@gmail.com).
thank you,
good bye.
 
This may sound like a stupid question but how do we know which one real or which one is fake, since the address is from [admin@gmail.com] clearly shown how genuine it is. or is there a way for those phisher to forge an email address from [blahblah@blahblah.com] to [admin@gmail.com]?

By the way thankx for the caution.
 
When I was checking my messages I saw something strange in that mail, like the subject of the mail, google never will give part of yout money to users, its obvious.
I guess the mail can be made by everyone, because you can choose what you want to be your gmail adress, I guess someone takes and create this gmail, just to pass to people trojan and virus.
 
Well, I apparently got one of these messages to one of my gmail accounts, but it was in Spanish & then I don't check that account very much. So apparently google decided to email me to my "backup" email account, and apparently they decided it would be a good idea to do that in Korean (I may have been in Korea when I registered the account in question, or I may have told them I was Korean, who knows -- I tend to make up crap like birthdays rather than trust companies with all my private info)

Anyway, this is what the google Korean to English translator told me the second (apparently real) message said:

Under setting visit the password against you [my address]@gmail.com Google accounts the cotton lower part link again coldly. When the click chart it is not connected an http://www.google.com/accounts/[stuff]l=ko dignity link, copy URL in the new browser window and attach and. It uses Google and it gives and from it thanks. With you accounts about under relating there is a doubt fact and it visits Google accounts FAQ of site afterwords the cotton it wishes. http://www.google.com/help/faq_accounts.html the mail is the sending whole aspect mail. To the sliced raw fish shoes against this message answer back, it does not give.


----------------

I assume "sliced raw fish shoes" is Korean for phishing?

mephisto_007 said:
This may sound like a stupid question but how do we know which one real or which one is fake, since the address is from [admin@gmail.com] clearly shown how genuine it is. or is there a way for those phisher to forge an email address from [blahblah@blahblah.com] to [admin@gmail.com]?

By the way thankx for the caution.

The emails I've got from real google people are from google.com, not gmail.com. Also, rather than clicking any links (in response to a spanish email, see below) I replied directly to admin@gmail.com, and it said "account deleted") I suppose anyone could have asked for "admin" at gmail.com, or any number of things.

The Korean email I mention below is from accounts-noreply@gmail.com, which I think is also an authentic address (certainly they prefer you go through their forms & get a problem number if you are talking to them about specific bugs.)
 
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