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After the victim pays up, the scammers simply vanish into the ether. The check states that some commission fee will unlock a much larger amount. For the recipient, it looks like a harmless e-mail from Google Photos with the header “So-and-so shared a photo with you.”Ī photo of a nonexistent check should immediately betray the scammers’ intentions. Scammers use Google Photos to share photographs that include comments about sudden large remittances that can be had by replying to the e-mail address supplied in the message.

And there is nothing to prevent them from using this same loophole to distribute other types of spam or phishing, as well as malware.

(You’ll never see a dime, obviously.)Īttackers are also adept at using Google Calendar to set up fake polls for which a reward is likewise offered. Usually, their spam details consist of a short bit of text stating that you are entitled to a cash payment for some reason, and a link that supposedly lets you receive it.Īfter that, everything’s about the same - either it’s a phishing link from which the cybercriminals try to get your bank card details (ostensibly to send you the money), or they ask for some sort of transfer fee to be paid before the money is sent. Spammers use the location and topic fields to convey the details to you. Well, spammers have recently taken to making appointments en masse.īecause Google Calendar is designed to let anyone at all invite you to a meeting, both Calendar and Gmail (which receives the notification) are totally fine with any John Doe scheduling a meeting with you. Naturally, if someone uses Google Calendar to arrange a meeting with you, you receive notifications about it.

With that in mind, let’s look at which Google services spammers use - and how. As it happens, Google services often send e-mail notifications to Gmail inboxes - and Google’s antispam module avoids flagging notifications from its own services as spam. The spammer’s main task is to bypass the spam filter and deliver e-mail to your inbox. Spam through Google services: Calendar, Photos, Drive, Storage, Analytics, and Forms The downside is that online fraudsters have learned to exploit the convenience of Google services to send spam or worse. And there’s no need to mess around moving files and data between services Google does everything for you. It’s all very handy - register once and away you go. Calendar is linked to Gmail, Gmail to Google Drive, Google Drive to Google Photos, and so on. And they are all integrated with each other. As you know, Google is not just a search tool, but multiple services used by billions of people every day: Gmail, Calendar, Google Drive, Google Photos, Google Translate, the list goes on.