A false phishng scam has been circulating to those who use a Gmail e-mail account. Phishing e-mails trick the victim into giving the scammer important personal information.

In this case victims were sent e-mails that claimed that they were on of 12 winners of a $500 prize. To collect the money they must click on a link. The link redirects the victims to a site hosted on Tripod that looks just like the Gmail website.

There the site tells you that you need to sign up for Gmail Games. However the membership fee costs $8.60. You also need to give PayPal, StormPay or moneybookers account information.

Of course the $500 doesn’t exist and victims risk losing everything they have in those accounts.

However, Google stated that since it has Phishing protection it was able to disable the link and run a warning message on top of the e-mail. So the number that actually were exposed to the scam are very few.

If you do receive this e-mail it would be wise to delete the e-mail and
not follow the link provided.

[via scmagazine.com]