Gmail Blocks 18 Million Fake Coronavirus Emails Daily
Google's email filters block 18 million phishing or malware emails every day, which are related to the coronavirus pandemic. This is almost 20% of all messages blocked by Gmail filters.
- Gmail filters block up to 100 million e-mails a day containing malicious code or phishing information;
- Almost one fifth of the unsafe messages use the SARS-CoV2 coronavirus pandemic;
- Google Mail is one of the most popular email service providers, almost 1/3 of the messages are being sent using its services.
Gmail is one of the most popular e-mail services. According to Statista, almost 1/3 of the world's e-mails is delivered through it. This explains the data provided by Google's blog - more than 100 million e-mails a day contain malicious code or phishing. Interestingly, the subject of almost 20% of them is coronavirus and the Covid-19 disease. This is only a part of the pandemic-related spam - up to 240 million of such "junk" e-mails a day land in e-mail limbo.
Such numbers are the result of the work of the message scanning mechanisms used by Google. The company's blog, presents several types of harmful information, which are sent to users. Most of them are attempts to impersonate well-known organizations such as WHO. Such threats are caught by the domain validation system. There are also cases of money scams under the pretext of Covid-19, impersonation of companies operating in remote mode, or false government messages. Google claims that many malware campaigns have only been "updated" for coronavirus. Some of the fake e-mails come from known sources.
The targets of such attacks are mainly people currently working remotely or users who have lost their jobs and are in a difficult financial situation due to the pandemic. The latter group is particularly vulnerable, as many of the e-mails offers easym well-paid jobs. There are also attempts to exploit the fear of the pandemic and the threat of government blocking our finances. It is worth adding that Google filters are not completely tight, some of such junk mails may appear in our mailbox nevertheless. That is why we need to be more careful and better informed about current threats. Not only biological ones, but (unfortunately) also in cyberspace.
