It is very likely that most of you currently have one or more Gmail accounts, Google’s email service. We tell you this because an international campaign has been detected that, using artificial intelligence, tries to steal your accounts.
The truth is that right now we have the possibility of taking advantage of the different AI platforms for all types of completely legitimate uses. But there are also a growing number of malicious actors trying to use this growing technology for their own benefit. They are fully aware that they can use artificial intelligence methods to impersonate or prepare malicious campaigns in much less time.
This is precisely the case that is happening now and that directly affects our Gmail email accounts. Specifically, cybercriminals in this case use AI to obtain call IDs and thus appear to be legitimate technicians from certain companies.
In this case, and to deceive users of the aforementioned email service, they use artificial intelligence to impersonate Google technicians. The campaign focuses on potential victims receiving a call that seems legitimate from the search company itself, informing us that there has been unauthorized access to our email account. Here the deception focuses on the fact that if we check the number, generally international, it appears that it does correspond to the official Google number.
Therefore, in many cases we will not doubt the veracity of that call that we are receiving as a warning about the identity theft of our Gmail account.
How to avoid the Gmail scam that uses AI
However, in reality we are facing a major scam that will put our data at risk. We know all this because precisely a security expert from the giant Microsoft was a victim of the scam attempt that we mentioned. Hence we know the verifications regarding the reliability of the call numbers received by the supposed Google person responsible for the warning.
Initially, the attacker poses as a technician from the search giant who is trying to find a solution to the hacking of our Gmail account. All this in order to regain control over it by the legitimate user, that is, us.
Despite the apparent reliability of the call from the supposed Google technician, the security expert requested a verification email. And that’s where he realized that the domain of the email he received did not correspond to that of the search giant. At that moment he realized the scam of which he was being a victim and cut off all communication.
If he had provided the data requested by the supposed Google technician, the cybercriminal would have taken control of the Gmail account and accessed all the data stored here, with the risk that this entails. Again, this means that we should never provide access credentials to our personal accounts and distrust anyone who asks for them.
