Virus alert: Please check your AdWords Payment Information/Please Update Your Billing Information.

On running OzEfilter this morning I noticed two emails possibly from Google adwords, but most likely a phishing attempt.

I decided to receive these emails instead of OzEfilter deleting them safely at the mail server.

The reason I wanted to check them out is many smaller businesses give Google adwords a go either to promote their business or to try to generate some income from their site. Since the focus of JustLocal is to assist micro and small business, I felt checking these out might help others.

Both emails are the same and start with the following:

This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does
not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message. If you
have any questions, please visit the Google AdWords Help Centre at
https://adwords.google.com/support/?hl=en_GB
the page.

and then go on to state:

Our attempt to charge your credit card for your
outstanding Google AdWords account balance was declined.
Your account is still open. However, your ads have been suspended. Once
we are able to charge your card and receive payment for your account
balance, we will re-activate your ads.

Hovering the mouse over the first link the text tip which appears, shows the site address to be a Google address. However hovering the mouse over another address used to log on, shows it is not a Google address, and is an obvious phishing attempt to probably gain user name, password and/or possibly credit card information.

The advice I have in these situations, is not to connect to a site from a link in an email. Instead, open the browser and go directly to the site by using the URL known to be correct for the site.

Whilst most of us will discard these emails after realising they are fake, because of the large volume of emails sent, the probability is some people will get caught, which to me is quite sad.

It should be kept in mind that in my experience I have only ever found one situation where a computer was infected, that was not the result of a person being tricked into taking action.

I use OzEfilter to assist me in handling unwanted emails. What I find is it helps people to reduce the exposure from the Internet and just as importantly, to reduce the chances of people doing something to damage their computer.

Please take care with all emails, and in this type of situation, emails that can be mass marketed, because large numbers of people use these well known brand companies.

- Kelvin