How can I tell if an email from Google is legitimate? Or if you’d like to use a similar alternative to Google Docs, we have a great list of secure Google Docs alternatives here. To learn how to secure Google Drive read our guide here. Google blocks millions of spam mail each day, but this message really catches people off-guard since the notification or email comes from Google itself. On mobile, the scam uses the collaboration feature in Google Drive to generate a notification inviting people to collaborate on a document. The scariest part about this Google Docs scam is that the emails and notifications it generates come directly from Google. The phishing scam itself is nothing new – which is to get you to click on a link within a message. The malware then emailed everyone in the victim's contacts list in order to spread itself. Giving the permission allowed scammers to access the email account, contacts and online documents. A flaw within Google Drive was exploited to send out seemingly legitimate push notifications and emails from Google, If a Gmail user clicked on the “Open in Docs” button in the email, they were taken to a real Google-hosted page and asked to permit a seemingly legitimate service, called “Google Docs”, to access their email account data.

Google drive spam email