New Google Adwords scam

[ATNO/TW]

August 31st, 2008, 9:57 am

Hadn't seen this one, and I've been around a long time.

Spoofed email address to appear to come from Google, but link in the email body directs to a phishing site from China

Quote:

---------------------------
Dear Advertiser,

We were unable to process your payment.
Your ads will be suspended soon unless we can process your payment.
To prevent your ads from being suspended, please update your billing information.

Your account will be updated once you've done two things:

Please sign in
to your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login,
and update your payment information.

1) Update Your Primary Card Information
2) Update Your Billing Preferences

If you decide to pay
by direct debit, we may need to receive your signed debit authorization,
depending on your location. If you choose bank transfer,
your ads will show as soon as we receive your payment.

It may take up to two hours before your Billing Summary page reflects this update.

We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.
------------------------------------------
This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does
not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.
----------------------------------

[joebert]

August 31st, 2008, 10:30 am

So, the anchor text looks legit, but the actual link points elsewhere ?

[ATNO/TW]

August 31st, 2008, 10:50 am

joebert wrote:

So, the anchor text looks legit, but the actual link points elsewhere ?

exactly. Very similar to many of the paypal scams.

[righteous_trespasser]

August 31st, 2008, 10:57 am

There are ones like that that tell you to pay an item on ebay aswell ... I've received two of those ...

[joebert]

August 31st, 2008, 10:59 am

I can only assume they'll use the phished Adwords account details to launch campaigns to other phishing sites. Possibly even installers launched through Flash advertisements, depending on how well Google screens flash advertisements via Adwords.

September 1st, 2008, 5:54 pm

That would be a sure scam. I also encountered similar scam mail on my paypal but I was warned by google that it's a phishing site.

September 2nd, 2008, 4:02 am

We get these from time to time from all sorts of sources, if it's something you are ever concerned could be real, just log into the vendors site as usual instead of following the link in the email.

September 3rd, 2008, 10:32 am

I have been working with PPC for the last 4-5 years, and I have started to observe that there are some SERIOUS SERIOUS flaws in the manner adwords operate.

For example we were targeting a geo location which was a quadrangle encompassing 4 points near Texas, but we were shocked on several occasions when we received clicks from regions far-off in Alaska.

We have reported these issues to google on several occasions but havent received refund of any sort.

September 16th, 2008, 1:32 am

look like scam better not to trust if you dont need this