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It’s important to be skeptical of unusual push notifications the same way you would be if you received any unsolicited online chat, email, or SMS message. Hackers can send push notificationsįraudsters can weaponize push notifications, just like email and SMS messages. The Google Drive scam offers some key learning opportunities for enterprises: 1. 5 Lessons to Learn from the Google Drive Scam While phishing scams are nothing new, the use of push notifications caught many users off guard, which has led Google to focus on implementing new measures to identify malicious use of Google Drive notifications. For example, some claimed the recipient had won a prize, whereas other messages prompted recipients to review their financial transactions. The notifications came from an official no-reply Google address, that made them look authentic and featured a range of messages written in broken English or Russian. Users that clicked on the push notifications were taken to a document containing a large link to a malicious website (the emails also featured malicious links).
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The 2020 Google Drive Scam: Here’s What HappenedĪs part of a Google Drive phishing scam, hackers sent push notifications and emails to thousands of Gmail users, which invited the recipient to collaborate on a Google doc. This article will examine what happened during the Google Drive Scam and identify how to prevent similar phishing attempts. Since the start of the global pandemic, there has been a substantial increase in online scams, with a 667% increase in Covid-19 related email scams.Īs phishing attacks become more common and sophisticated, being able to detect phishing attempts is business-critical. A fraudster attempts to mislead the victim into clicking on a malicious link and giving up personal information or downloading malware.
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The cyber attack was a new type of phishing scam.
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In a recent scam, hackers targeted hundreds of thousands of Google users with fake Google Drive notifications and emails to trick them into visiting malicious websites. With the use of remote working and collaborative tools on the rise amid the Covid-19 pandemic, cyber criminals discover new ways to reach users.
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