Cybercriminals have found a way to use Google Alerts to trap victims in scams or promote malware programs.
Computer Bleeping CEO Lawrence Abrams found that hackers are creating malicious sites on Google, with the aim of sending emails to people who have set alerts for a specific topic. The malicious pages are created using popular keywords and are based on hot topics.
“For example, as we publish a lot of ransomware, I have set up Google Alert for Ransomware. Knowing that users are desperate for decryptors, hackers create fake spam pages containing text with keywords related to a specific decryptor that may be affecting many users at that time,” Abrams writes.
When the user clicks on the email notification or even if they click on a malicious page in Google search, they are taken to the malicious website.
The people behind these scams create fake pages that focus on a variety of topics ranging from technologyto entertainment to summer vacations, Abrams noted.
“The best way to protect yourself from these types of low-quality and malicious websites is to specify that you only want the ‘best results’ when creating the alert. This can be set up with the alert options at the top of the Google Alerts page,” Abrams suggested.
