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Phishers Using Google Calendar for Online Scams

by Tim Stevens on July 4, 2008 at 07:05 AM

Phishers Targeting Google CalendarPhishing is the practice of sending out fake e-mails in an attempt to lure unsuspecting recipients into providing information about themselves -- things like passwords, credit card information, or even Social Security numbers. By now everyone knows to watch out for and ignore shady e-mails with bad grammar (right?), but what about shady e-mails that appear to be sent from your Google Calendar account? It's time to start watching out for those, too.

Google blogger Philipp Lenssen keeps many appointments in his Google Calendar, some of which are publicly available. A phisher found one of those public appointments and sent an e-mail that appeared to be related. It was, however, just another lame attempt to steal his account:
We are having congestions due to the anonymous registration of Gmail accounts, so we are shutting down some Gmail accounts, and your account was among those to be deleted. We are sending you this email to so that you can verify and let us know if you still want to use this account.
So, yet another shady operation to keep your eyes out for online. As always, it doesn't matter the method, if someone's asking for your password online, there's an awfully good chance they're not going to do good things with it! [Source: CNET News.com]

Tags: google calendar, GoogleCalendar, online scams, OnlineScams, phishing, security

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