ST. GEORGE — A new and sophisticated phishing attack swiftly spread across the web Wednesday and into the inboxes of Gmail account users. Google said it is investigating the phishing scam and encouraged people not to click on the link.
“We have taken action to protect users against an email impersonating Google Docs, and have disabled offending accounts,” Google said in a statement. “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.”
A phishing attack is a popular method of stealing credentials and hacking into people’s emails, bank accounts or other private accounts. A hacker poses as a trusted source and sends users a malicious link.
Wednesday’s sophisticated attack showed up in a convincing email appearing as though it was from a trusted source asking users to open a Google Document.
Users who clicked the link were taken to a page to open the “Google Docs” app with their Google account subsequently granting phishers full access to the user’s email account and contacts.
Anyone who opened the email and clicked on the link should check their Google App permissions by clicking here, and delete the one called “Google Docs.”
The phishing attempt made its way across the internet for several hours Wednesday before Google blocked the page allowing users to give data permissions.
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