Google Plus is still in the trial phase and participation is by invite only at the moment. The invites are rare, which has led to people begging on sites such as Twitter for someone to send them an invite. This has played straight into the criminals’ hands. The fake invites to join Google Plus look very like the genuine invitations, clicking on the links in the email will take the victim to Canadian Family Pharmacy, not Google Plus.
The fake invites are spreading through e-mail, and they look very similar to the actual invites to the service, down to the e-mail address which seems to be coming from a Google Plus member.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at security company Sophos said that,”The spammers are no doubt hoping that the email will be hard to resist, as many people are eager to see what is being billed as Google’s answer to Facebook.”
It’s not the first time Google launches a new product and the hackers take advantage of this situation. When Google Music was revealed, malevolent people came up with fake invites in order to lure unaware internet users to malicious websites.
Scams such as this one are very common with major product launches; most recently, we’ve seen a similar phishing scheme involving Google Music invites. Whenever you receive an “invite” to a service, especially from a third party, be extra careful before clicking any links and make sure that the invite is really coming from a legitimate source.
source:http://techmento.com/2011/07/04/google-plus-scam-spreading-via-fake-invites/
0 comments:
Post a Comment