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I received a new spam/phishing email today for the first time. This one focuses on Google Photo users and I suspect mainly mobile devices that use the Google Android operating system.
However, Google Photos is a free Cloud Storage facility where you can upload photos with applications to do this, available from Google Play and Apple App Store. So one can assume any device, including your home computer or laptop, could be vulnerable
The URLQuery.net I usually use to get more information about what they trying to get hold of, or what website they trying to phish your login information from is down at the moment (21st June 2019). I will update this article as soon as the information becomes available. Providing the original compromised website is not taken down before I can get to it.
Below is a screenshot from the actual email. As you can see the email looks the part. What stands out is the sender email address chicktan@holtrenfrew.com.
If this email was indeed from Google, you would expect an email address similar to googlephotos-noreply@google.com. This in itself does not guarantee that the email actually came from Google.
For a more in-depth article discussion on how to find out if an email is legit, please read my article on “How to Recognise Spam, Scam and Phishing Email”. It was written, discussing a suspect email I received from PayPal but the principles are still the same.
Most importantly, Do Not Click ANY Links.