Beware of Google Ads Email Phishing Attempts
It’s an email that no on running Google Ads wants to receive: Your Account is suspended. Emails made to look like they are coming from Google are being sent in an effort to try to trick you into giving up your Google Account details. They’re phishing emails, and they can be pretty convincing.
I got one of these Google Ads account suspension emails today, and I have to admit that the email looks pretty convincing. Except that the email address it was sent to is not associated with a Google Ads account, so I knew it was a fake email. It took me a minute to discover how the sender of the emails is trying to trick the user into giving up their account details–but I finally found it. Let’s take a look at this particular email, the screen capture is above.
The email address the email comes from is “Ads@Google.com”. They have formatted it in a pretty convincing way, as well. So, it does look like it potentially came from Google. I have never received a ‘valid” “your account is suspended” email from Google, as I have never had one of my Google Ad accounts suspended. But, they do seem to give a random account number, and the “Circumventing Systems” and “submit an appeal” is, in fact a link. But they use the # symbol in those links, so it looks like a link but it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s not clickable.
The only ‘valid’ link is the “here” link, which goes to the phisher’s website, which I assume looks like Google Ads, and a place to log into a Google Account. I didn’t click the link.
So, be very wary of emails that you receive, even though they appear to be sent from a reliable source, such as Google. In this case, if you were to receive such an email. I would go directly to Ads.Google.com rather than clicking on a link in an email. Something like an account suspension is disturbing, so I can see how someone would be more concerned about the suspension and not think that it’s actually a Phishing email sent to them.
As a reminder, I highly recommend that you take advantage of Google’s Advanced Protection program, which provides a lot more account security on your Google Account, even providing a physical key that helps protect your account.