07 October 2009 | Author: D. Warburton Search Copywriter

30,000 more accounts leaked as phishing attacks hit Google and Yahoo!

Thousands of users of Google and Yahoo! e-mail services have also fallen victim to what is being described as "an industry-wide phishing scheme."

The phishing scheme was brought to public attention over the weekend when 10,000 Hotmail addresses were published to the web, but BBC News is now reporting to have seen two further lists containing the account details of more than 30,000 users of various e-mail services, including Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and AOL Mail. A third list has also reportedly been discovered by Google.

As reported by bigmouthmedia yesterday, these recent 'phishing' scams aim to trick internet users into providing details of their e-mail or bank accounts by using fake websites purporting to be genuine. Google is claiming that fewer than 500 Gmail accounts have been affected by the scam, though this was prior to the discovery of the third list. The Mountain View giant is stressing to account holders that the scam does not represent "a breach of Gmail security," as it is "a scam to get users to give away their personal information to hackers."

A Google spokesperson stated: "We recently became aware of an industry-wide phishing scheme through which hackers gained user credentials for web-based mail accounts including Gmail accounts.

"As soon as we learned of the attack, we forced password resets on the affected accounts. We will continue to force password resets on additional accounts when we become aware of them."

It is not yet clear whether these latest phishing attacks are directly related to those that affected Hotmail users, which resulted in Microsoft's e-mail provider urging 21 million users to change their passwords with immediate effect.

Home | Careers | RSS | Contact Us | Newsletter

International sites: