Scammers are getting more and more clever in their tricks to get you to turn over financial information.

Just today, I received two emails about my Google AdWords acount. I use Google AdWords, so I was definitely interested. HOWEVER…

Neither email was legitimate.

Here is one of them:

Subject line: Your payment didn’t succeed, so your ads have been suspended.

Oops - what’s wrong with my payment??

This is the body of the email:

Dear Advertiser,
——————————
We were unable to process your payment.
Your ads will be suspended soon unless we can process your payment.
To prevent your ads from being suspended, please update your payment information.
————————
Please sign in
to your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login,
and update your payment information.
————————————
We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords.

It looks legitimate, I don’t want my ads to be suspended, and they were kind enough to include a link to login to  my account. When I click on the link, the page  looks exactly like a Google AdWords login page.

These guys are tricky - and they catch a lot of unsuspecting people this way.

So - how do you protect yourself?

1.  NEVER go to a website from clicking the link included in the email. Instead, open a new browser window and type in the link to the website. Access your account from there.

2. Check the link included in the email. On the surface, the above link is a Google AdWords link. But when you look at the embedded link, it is not at all the same. This is where you really end up from the link in my email: http://www.adwords.google.com.cdoip.cn/select/Login   See the cdoip.cn portion of the link? That is not a Google link.

How do you check this? If you put your mouse over the link, look at the bottom left of your computer screen. Most of the time, the address you are going to will show up in the corner.

 3. Report fraudulent or suspicious emails. These companies want to protect you. Go to their website and look for Customer Support.

Someone had already reported this email - when I checked this “google” website, I was greeted with this: