How to Stop That Massive Google Doc Phishing Scam From Stealing Your Deets via Gmail

Google: We trust it with our most precious secrets (aka our browser history, and, to a lesser extent, our passwords and financial information).

But what happens when the fortress of security is compromised? Or worse, when we accidentally drop the gates and unwittingly let scammers inside?

Nothing good, obviously.

Many did just that today, when a widespread 'phishing' attack struck Gmail users, with an offer to share with them a Google Doc; clicking the link and logging into your Google account actually resulted in users granting this malicious third party access to all your account's details. It then emails all of your contacts with the same sneaky invitation.

Friends with Gmail accounts, this hack is now going around: [FRIEND HERE[ has invited you to view the following document. DO NOT CLICK.

— Liz Shannon Miller (@lizlet) May 3, 2017

Gmail hack going around that looks like (pic). If you click on the "Open in Docs" it grabs your contact list and sends the spam out from you pic.twitter.com/zIBD5VFscX

— Liana Corinne (@Lillyana81) May 3, 2017

If you fell for the scam, don't feel too bad. As the Washington Post notes, this particular attack was tricky to detect because "it takes advantage of Google's legitimate tool for sharing data with responsible third-party apps."

"Since the bogus invitation is being routed through Google's real system, nothing is misspelled, the icons look accurate, and it's hard to know something's gone wrong until it's too late," they add.

Can you pick out the malicious login page? pic.twitter.com/RCcJ3g0N50

— Brandon Frohs ❄ (@0b10011) May 3, 2017

(The Democratic National Committee can't console themselves with that same knowledge. When they were infamously hacked in 2016, it was because one of Hillary Clinton's staffers was fooled with a fake "change password" email that looked like it came from Gmail. It had not.)

Google has since taken some action, disabling "offending accounts" and removing the fake pages for the malware. Google also updated its "Safe Browsing" feature. 

However, just in case that nasty email is sitting in your Gmail account still, keep an eye out for any Google Docs invites, especially those that include an email address that begins “hhhhhhhhhhhhhh” and ends in “mailinator.com" in the list of recipients.

If you did indeed click the link, you can revoke the phisher's access by visiting https://myaccount.google.com/permissions. There, you can delete the cheeky "Google Docs" app causing all the trouble.

It's not yet known who is behind the attack, but we have our theories.

Photo: Warner Bros