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Phishing Scam Sweeps Through Google Chat

by Warren Riddle on February 25, 2009 at 07:39 PM


The hits just keep on coming for Google this week. After outages plagued Gmail yesterday, news began to spread about a phishing scam creating havoc among Gmail chat users.

Numerous users of the instant messaging service fell victim to the ViddyHo worm, which begins innocently enough as a message from a supposed "contact" asking the person to click on a link from tinyurl.com, a service that shrinks URLs for easy sharing on sites like Twitter. The person is then directed to the ViddyHo website, where they are asked for personal Gmail login information, which is then used to hijack the account. Chat messages are then sent out to all of the person's contacts, further spreading the chaos.

Have you ever been the victim of an online scam?
Yes3631 (22.3%)
No10844 (66.7%)
I'm not sure1786 (11.0%)

New video scams such as this arise as people become more aware of e-mail scams, such as the ubiquitous Nigerian money wires. As a result, criminals more finely develop their forms of Internet fraud. Duping people into viewing video links is becoming more and more prevalent as the perpetrators are able to infect the computer by uploading malware in the background while the videos run.

In a Tuesday night release, Google stated, "We have blocked the addresses being used to send these messages. Users of Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome will receive a phishing warning when trying to visit the ViddyHo.com site," along with a helpful reminder. "We encourage users to be very careful when asked to share their personal information." [From NYTimes.com via Valleywag]

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Tags: gchat, gmail, google, google chat, GoogleChat, Phishing, security, top, ViddyHo

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