Pocket-lint is supported by its readers. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more Home > Apps > App news > Google app news Scammers are now trying to catch you out with Google Drive notificationsAdrian Willings, Contributing editor · 29 October 2020 · News Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Google FacebookTwitterPintrestLinkedInMail Why you can trust Pocket-lint (Pocket-lint) - Not content with trying to trick you into clicking dodgy links via email and stuffing your inbox full of spam, scammers are now turning to Google Drive to catch you out. Google Drive has a useful system built into it that alerts users when a document is shared with them or lets them know about important activity in Drive.
That system sends both emails and push notifications to your phone to keep you in the know. And it's that very system that scammers are abusing to take advantage of unsuspecting users. It's an unfortunately intelligent scam as the notifications come from Google itself and at first glance can appear perfectly legitimate. On your smartphone, the notifications appear like another other invite you'd have from colleagues and others inviting you to collaborate on a specific document. The difference is, when you click that link you're taken to a document with tempting links that would take you to dodgy websites. Normally, this sort of spam wouldn't even make it into your email inbox as they'd generally just get filtered into your spam folder but these Google Drive notifications are getting through the system.
It seems that these scammers are exploiting this method and bombarding long lists of Gmail addresses with plenty of people reporting the problem. Wired reports that the linked documents are heavily edited and show signs that the scammers are duplicating their efforts to hit as many people as possible. Google told Wired that it has measures in place to detect these new sorts of scams but if users find themselves targeted then they can report the offending documents here. How to downgrade iOS and keep your data By · 24 September 2021 This handy guide could save you from any data loss.
Writing by Adrian Willings.
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