Phishing attacks:Update Gmail accounts

By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 13 May 2010, 22:07 IST   |    2 Comments
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Phishing attacks:Update Gmail accounts
New Delhi: Recently users of Google's email services received a legal notice from the gmail team asking them to update their account details for security reasons. Around 71 million internet and close to 10 million broadband users in India are increasingly becoming the victims of vicious phishing attacks that can result in identity theft, danger to life and even crippling financial fraud, reports Shalini Singh from The Economic Times. This particular legal notice from Gmail requested the users to renew their account name, password, occupation, birth date and country of residence. It also carried a threat that users who did not update their details within 7 days of receiving the warning would lose their account permanently. The mail also carried out the reasons such as "Gmail Team is working on total security on all accounts in order to make Gmail better as ever and as a result of this security upgrade we require all Gmail members to verify their account with Google. To prevent your account from disability you will have to update your account by clicking the reply button and filling the space below." Phishing activity has been on the rise across India since December. The biggest targets for cyber criminals are banking sites followed by free email sites like Gmail and Yahoo and social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut. While discussing the issue one of the staff from google said that, we always advise our users to be wary of any message that asks for your personal information, or messages that refer you to a webpage asking for personal information. Google or Gmail does not send unsolicited mass messages asking for passwords or personal information; even if the message asking for it claims to be from us, please don't believe it. "A schoolteacher in Mumbai lost almost Rs 10 lakh after phishers got into her netbanking account. Internet penetration is going up which is inviting more criminal attacks as awareness levels are very low," said Rakshit Tandon, consultant safe surfing with the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). The IAMAI also runs cyber safety programmes and has already worked with 3,50,000 students in 185 schools across 43 cities and 13 states.

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