The best way for
Google to follow up the outage of popular Web-based
e-mail client Gmail probably wasn't with a phishing scam. But that's exactly what happened Tuesday. A few hours after Gmail was restored, a
phishing attack started to proliferate through GTalk, Google's chat application.
The phishing scam came through an unsolicited GTalk message that included a TinyURL link that enticed users to "check out this video." Users who followed the TinyURL link were led to ViddyHo. The ViddyHo site then asked for Gmail log-in information, including a user name and password.
TinyURL has blacklisted the site to avoid any more scams using its service.
Google hasn't responded to the phishing attack in any of its public channels—Official Google Blog, Gmail Blog, etc.—but The Wall Street Journal reached Google, which confirmed that the video link going around was, in fact, a phishing scam.
The phishing scam wraps up what can only be considered a rough day for the Mountain View, Calif-based search engine giant. Twitter users were vocal about Gmail going down. In fact, Google issued an apology once Gmail was restored.
"We know that for many of you this disrupted your working day. We're really sorry about this, and we did do everything to restore access as soon as we could. Our priority was to get you back up and running. Our engineers are still investigating the root cause of the problem," Acacio Cruz, Gmail site reliability manager, wrote on the Official Google Blog.
Aside from what was published in The Wall Street Journal, no official word has come from Google about the phishing scam.
