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Tuesday, August 19, 2008

New fraud scheme on Google (phishing / click fraud)

Fraudsters send you a fake email about your AdWord account being terminated. They ask you to renew your account by login on to a fake Google AdWord website that looks real. That's how they steal your login/password. Once your account is hijacked, they increase your daily budget and your bid for keywords that are part of their botnet system. In the process, they might also steal your credit card info or other useful info (your address for identity theft, your keyword list to feed their botnet).

Complaint received from a client:

Vincent....don't know if you'd be interested in this...but i use
google ad words & just recently someone hacked into my profile &
changed my daily max from $10 to $6,810, and then miraculously i
received over 1,000 clicks that day at $5.50 per click....they were
trying to charge me over $7K. I reported it and about a week later
they admitted it was not legitimate. Have you heard of this


Email sent by fraudsters:

Renew Your Account Now !

Dear Member,

This is your official notification from Google Inc. that the service(s) listed below will be deactivated and deleted if not renewed immediately.

As the Primary Contact, you must renew the service(s) listed below or it will be deactivated and deleted.

Renew Now your Google AdWords services. [link deleted]

SERVICE: Google AdWords
EXPIRATION: August, 19 2008

Thank you for using Google Inc service.
We appreciate your business and the opportunity to serve you.

Google AdWords Service .

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, I am seeing this also.

Google disables your account for at least a week until they understand it was fraudulent. Client was not too happy, now we have a backup account in case this happens again, not the best way going about things but it works.

Anonymous said...

Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!

Anonymous said...

Brilliant blog, I had not noticed clickscoring.blogspot.com previously in my searches!
Carry on the good work!

Anonymous said...

Wow neat! This is a really great site! I am wondering if anyone else has come across something
exactly the same in the past? Keep up the great work!

Fraud Detection said...

Well thanks a bunch for sharing this. I hope they get these guys!