Great, Another Phishing Email Scam

Well, a new scam landed in my inbox this morning. Check out the details:

Google docs phish email scam example

This isn’t terribly new. I first saw references last fall (here’s a piece by Wired Magazine from last November: “Beware a New Google Drive Scam Landing in Inboxes“. Now, this isn’t terribly sophisticated, but it’s pretty clever. Now, I don’t have a David Anderson in my contacts, so this one is pretty obvious for me. But that’s a rather common name. Imagine how tempting it would be if it looked like it came from my friend/colleague David.

So, what should you do if you get an email like this? Report it! In most email tools, you can report a message as spam. If you have Gmail, you can report it as phishing, too. It’s pretty straightforward.

Gmail report phishing steps

You’ll see a dialog like this one:

Gmail Report Phishing Dialog Box

Click “Report Phishing Message” and you’re done.

Anyway, this seems as good a time as any to remind everyone to:

  • don’t click on links you’re not expecting. In this case, if I knew a David Anderson, I’d ping him independently of this email thread and ask about it. Do not reply to the email!
  • Make sure you have good malware protection and antivirus software. Here’s a great place to start: PC Magazine’s list of The Best Antivirus Protection for 2021.