Google Email Award Scam – New Phishing Technique To Steal Personal Information

You might be familiar of the lottery scams which comes often on your email. Today it has came to our information that one more email scam is revolving around the internet which is claiming it to be official prize money from Google Inc. Scammers are very smart , this time they choose Google as their subject because this September Google is turning 15. In order to celebrate Google might give some free money to lucky winners which is impossible. During the last 15 years Google has not done anything similar like this. The multimillion tech giant will probably celebrate with a cute Google Doodle or may some new operating system or anything , but will not give you free money to celebrate the occasion.

 

The scam email somewhat looks official which states that email owner has won GBP 800,000 British pounds in the Google 15 anniversary as organized by Anniversary center of Google Inc held in UK. As you can see from the image above (email scam detected by security blog Hoax-Slayer)  you can find many mistakes which proves that its completely fake. Below are some of the major signs:

• It claims that email holder has “won yourself “ ( Grammar mistake) .
• In the email its says eight hundred thousand which is written as 800,000 . But as you can see it is written is wrong order with two extra zeros at the end.
• A missing period at the end of the sentence.
• There’s no such thins as “ The Anniversary Centre of Google Inc “.
• In second paragraph of the body, it says “20 fortunate winner” it should be winner”s not winner.
• At the bottom of the email , the claim agent does not have a Gmail address. It has something like “xbmail.com” ?
• It will ask you to send your name , country,contact address,telephone number, sex,age and fax number to phillipbensonclaims@xbmail.com. No one sends Fax anymore.

After sending this email , scammers ask as you to send an upfront fees in order too release the payment. This is the way they earn. Not only you , they target millions of the emails and if even half of them get into their trap and pay them the upfront fee , you can imagine how much they can earn.

If Google would be sending official prize , the company might ask you to sign up for Google Wallet first and then deposit your winning amount there. From that money they can deduct the upfront fee or taxes but asking for the money before proves your identity to be fake. Some emails scammers even asks for your credit card number and then misuse or credit information. Always be careful when you receive this kind of email . Check thoroughly the entire email first then make some decision. If you have been a victim of any scam email , let us know in the comments below.