dear friends

Today, I received a mail purported to be from customer.awareness.care72@....  This mail informed me that the mail was sent from Google customer care and due to congestion in Google mails, they want to verify the password and id.  The mail asked me to write down the id, password, date of birth and the country in the mail itself and click the reply button.  Obviously, the mail would return to the person, who might have sent this. 

The mail looks neat and anybody reading this, would be tempted to write the id and pw and click the reply button.  Since I am an ardent user of social media and also associated with Cyber society of India, i made a study of this type of mail.

Google calendar, provides facility for the account holders to invite their contacts for any event.  For example, if there is a New Year meeting on a particular day and time, through this calendar, we can create an Invitation and send to all the people.  Such mails carry in the subject line the world Invitation in paranthesis like this  (Invitation).  That gave me the suspicion and started probing into this.

This is the first time, I am seeing a phishing message using google calendar.  If you have crreated a setting in google calendar to receive the alerts in mobile, you would also get the alert in mobile.

If the said person has sent the invitation to hundreds of people, atleast few would have become victims.  The id and password may be misused.  If the person who sends such messages can also configure, so that the receipient may not know who are the other invitees or receipients of such message.

From the Cyber Society of India, we are also taking up the matter with Google, so that they can plug the loop holes. 

Meanwhile, I caution all the members not to pass on the id and password to anybody, based on the emails.  Google or Yahoo never asks for id and pw through e mail.  We can confirm or change the pw only by logging in their official sites.

You may also alert your friends

Srinivasan
Prime Point
94440 50273