Careful inspection of the email should reveal the scam

Dec 17, 2014 21:13 GMT  ·  By

A phishing campaign targeting users of the mail service from Google tries to trick the recipients into disclosing their email account credentials by informing that their mailbox is close to reaching its space quota.

This scam is not exactly new and has different forms. This one asks the recipient to click on a link that would automatically remove unwanted messages, such as those from the “Deleted” folder. In another instance, the scammers offered the possibility to increase the space quota.

What they have in common is that the provided link actually leads to a phishing website that harvests the information entered in the “username” and “password” fields.

Deleting unneeded email automatically requires logging into the email account

Users who have two-factor authentication enabled should not have anything to worry about, though, but there are plenty of individuals that may not have this security feature turned on.

The current email is signed by a “Mail System Administrator,” OTA shows, and has the Google headquarters address stamped at the bottom, to make it look more legitimate.

The body of the message says that the current size of the mailbox has maxed out, and suggests deleting the emails that are no longer needed.

An alternative that does the job automatically is offered, as crooks know that users would rather complete the task this way than go through the emails manually. The link, however, leads to a fraudulent page that asks to sign in.

Legit communication follows certain standards, storage quota is difficult to reach

Instead of rushing to comply with the request, it is recommended to take a minute and analyze it. Most of the times the signs of deceit are obvious; starting with the way the recipient is addressed, to the claims made and the style used in the message, this communication is clearly as daylight a fraud attempt.

Companies address their clients using the information entered upon subscribing to the service. As such, a vague salutation such as “Dear” should definitely ring the alarm.

In this particular case though, the most important aspect is the size of the mailbox itself. Google made sure that its clients would not face this problem.

At the moment, it offers 15GB of free storage for the cloud, email and Google Plus Photos services. The total amount of used space can be checked on the Storage page.

With Yahoo, there is absolutely nothing to worry about because the company provides 1TB of storage for email. This is way more than a regular user would ever need for this type of activity.

If Outlook.com is used, then the space allotted for email storage is growing on a constant basis, and it is difficult to reach the maximum limit. However, if this happens, people trying to send an email to someone with a full mailbox will have their message bounced back, along with an explanation.