Phishing scams have been getting a lot common lately, with the techniques getting innovative day by day. Scammers attack us via SMS or email so as to take control of our sensitive data. But thanks to the raising awareness, we already know to be aware of such messages or sites that appear too good to be true.
Now the scammers have found a new way to weasel their way into your systems by targeting Google Calendar and similar calendar apps .
New Phishing Scam Found That Uses Google Calendar
According to the threat intelligence firm Kaspersky, they have found out a new type of phishing scam wherein the scammers are using Google Calendar for targeting users.
The scammers exploited a specific feature that adds invitations and events to the user’s calendars automatically by sending unsolicited calendar invitations carrying a link to the phishing URL to the users.
Once users click on these links, they were redirected to a website featuring a questionnaire with prize money on offer, to receive these prizes users were needed to fill in their credit card details and additional information which were used by the scammers to steal money or identify the user.
Steps To Follow In Order To Avoid Being Scammed
You don’t need to take any drastic step to avoid being the victim of the scam. All you have to do is turn off the automatic adding of your invites to your Google Calendar app and you are all set.
To turn off the automatic adding, follow these simples steps :
- Open Google Calendar and click on the setting Gear Icon
- Select the Event Setting option
- For the “automatically add invitations” option click on the dropdown menu and select “No, only show invitations to which I’ve responded”
- Below this in the Views option section, verify that “Show Declined Events” is NOT Checked!
If that’s not enough of a worrying situation for the tech giant then on the Monday morning of 18th June, Google’s Calendar refused to work for nearly three hours leaving the users all around the world confused and with questions.
Google Calendar is one of the most used by many individuals and workplaces to list down their day-to-day schedules and other important events.However, this major outage left many suffering and led to as many as 780 reports from users at one time insisting Google Calendar is not working.
Error 404/ URL Not Found Message Displayed
Google’s Calendar users seeking to access the service on their desktops were all met with a dead end 404 error message from around 10 am to 12.30 pm
Many users took to Twitter to express their disappointment with Google Calendar, blaming it on missing an important meeting or not knowing what their schedules hold next and some even went even as far as saying, they have no idea what they are supposed to do with their lives now.
In an attempt to control the situation, the G Suite team took to Twitter stating that they are aware of the issue and are working on it.
Other Google Services Remained Unaffected Amidst the Chaos
The G Suit team was quick to inform that the Google Calendar app on the mobile was still operational and can be used. Other services of Google such as Gmail and Google Maps were seen unaffected except for Hangout Meet that was facing some problems.
Although the Google Calendar did start working later, the problem arose just days after a massive Google outage took Youtube, Gmail, and Snapchat offline because of problems with the company’s overall Cloud service.