Stay clear of scams abusing the Google Brand

If the recent financial crisis wouldn’t make people’s life hard enough, some websites, firms and individuals try to use well known brands such as Google to empty the unaware users’ pockets even more or to simply steal their identity. Google is one of the most trusted brands in the World and scammers exploit this trust.
You won $1 Million US Dollars from Google, You’ve been selected to work for Google, Make money fast with Google. Sounds too good to be true? It is.

Before you fall victim of any phishing attempt and scam, please do check the following documents provided by Google or Federal Agencies like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC, http://www.ftc.gov) and the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3, http://www.ic3.gov):

Google’s help document about detecting scams and phishing attempts: http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=9110
Google’s blog post about scams: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-to-steer-clear-of-money-scams.html
Gather more knowledge about phishing attempts circulating in form of email in This Gmail help entry:http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=8253
FTC report about scams, including those which are using the Google trade mark: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/07/shortchange.shtm
IC3 document related to scams and phishing attempts on the Internet: http://www.ic3.gov/preventiontips.aspx

Websites promising easy way to get rich, using Google
Hundreds of websites are offering easy jobs like posting links on Google which can make you rich, or they are selling e-books which can teach you how to get rich using affiliate marketing and Google. The only thing you have to do is to pay a minimal fee, usually less than a couple of US Dollars, representing the shipping costs of a book, sign-up fee or a set of CDs.
There are several things on these websites which are suspicious:
If you look at the bottom of these websites’s pages you will see a short, small-font disclaimer which states the website is “in no way affiliated with Google”
These websites usually looks fishy on the first sight. The pages are extremely long, make use of huge fonts, convincing graphics, repeating the same thing dozens of times and they always put accent on how much you can earn
Sometimes there are testimonials, each of them stating that the program you found is extremely profitable.

When you pay for these services or items, your debit or credit card will be debited with the minimal sum they listed on the website. Usually the next month you will be billed with much more, in many cases amounts exceeding $100. The next month again, then again until you succeed to cancel the account or the card you payed with.

As per the FTC’s reports, thousands of users fell victim of these types of scams. You don’t have to be the next.

Work for Google scams
Do you dream about working for Google? Most of us do and phishing attacks often exploits this dream.
“You’ve been selected by our HR Team to work in Mountain View, CA in the Googleplex”. This message continues with asking you to submit your personal details like address, SSN and other data.
Detecting the legitimacy of these emails is rather easy, in fact in two steps you can check whether the message is legit or not:
Go to Google –Jobs and do a search on the job the email described. If the job doesn’t even exists, you know that the email is a phishing message
Have a look on the email headers. The “From”, “Return-path” and if exists, the “Reply-to” headers’ values should be the same and always end with “@google.com”. If even one differs or the email comes from a domain other than google.com, the message is not legit

E-mails telling you are rich, thanks to Google
“Your email address has been selected by the Google Award Team and you’re the winner of the great prize.”
These are phishing messages meant to steal your personally identifiable information like your name, SSN, home address.
Google lists all its awards, programs, promotions and give-aways on the Official Google Blog. Go there and do a search on the award the email describes. If you don’t find it, the message is not legit.
If you received suspicious emails through your Gmail email address, please report it as soon as possible.

How to avoid these scams and phishing attempts
There are simple ways to detect whether an email or website is legit. None of the below listed things takes more than a few seconds to check and can decrease the chance of falling victim of these scams:
Forget the dream of getting rich in no time. If it would exist, the internet users would be rich already
Do a WHOIS search on the suspicious domain name. If the registrant is not Google Inc., the website is not Google’s.
Do a search on “[award name] scam” or “[brand] scam” on Google. If you find the website or award you’ve been told about amongst the results, you know it’s very likely to be a scam
Google employees don’t send you emails from Gmail addresses. All the legit emails are coming from a google.com email address
Learning what the email headers contain can do pretty good job in the detection of the legitimacy of emails. If “From”, “Return-path” and if exists, the “Reply-to” headers’ values does not match, it’s likely that the message is not legit

Google Cash system author, Chris Carpenter testimony: I am not a scammer

Facebook ads, press releases and even Google ads make users to pay for an e-book — which original author was Chris Carpenter –, still creates buzz on the internet. Hundreds of users are complaining at the Federal Trade Commission and other complaint boards about fraudulently charged credit cards, unreceived products and inability of terminating the subscription they have payed for. All this because Chris Carpenter created an e-book which explained quite in detail how to become a successful e-marketer. The e-book was published for the first time almost 5 years ago, the internet has changed since then a lot, so did the people who claim to be Chris Carpenter and sell the Google Cash e-book and related services for unaware users.

On the Google Websearch help forum revolted users complain about unreceived products and inability of unsubscribing from the “Get rich fast” service. Many users blame Google Inc. because either they think that the service is Google related or because the corporation worth billions seemingly does nothing to protect its brand.

One of the users asks: “I have been researching a service called GoogleCash which is a work at home plan. Is this a legitimate business or just a scam ? If it is just another scam, why does Google allow them to use their name and trademark ?”

The top contributors of the forum — users who has been chosen by Google for their excellent contribution –, Dave Moore, Kaleh, and other, high level users like Thomas P. instantly answer to avoid the system because it is very likely to be a scam.

In a response, a user claiming to be Chris Carpenter replies:

This is Chris Carpenter the author of the ebook “Google Cash” ([editors' note.: link removed])

My ebook Google Cash, and the Google Cash System are not scams.

The Google Cash System is a legitimate work at home business that I detail in
an ebook that first came out in 2003.

However, recently some scammers took my Google Cash name and started using
it: Google Cash Kit, Google Cash Cow, Google Cash Success Kit, etc., etc.

Those are not affiliated with my Google Cash ebook or the Google Cash system.

I purchased one of those Google Cash Kit products a few months back and
was surprised to find all sorts of extra charges on my credit card that I didn’t
see anything about on their site.

I remember thinking OMG now everyone is going to start screaming that Google Cash
is a scam. When in reality the Google Cash System and ebook are legit but those jerks
that stole the Google Cash name are questionable at best.

It sucks that these scammers started using my Google Cash name, because
the Google Cash ebook and System are for real and they have helped thousands
of people make money online. If you do a little more research online you will see
that this is true.

It also sucks that I didn’t come up with a better name than Google Cash. Because
since it has “Google” in the name, it’s not really my name, so anyone can come
along and copy the name and there isn’t really anything I can do about it.

So I’ll be changing the name from Google Cash to something else. I’ll let you
know as soon as I’ve changed it.

Anyway, please do checkout the real Google Cash ebook ([editors' note.: link removed])
and I promise you, it is not a scam!

Thanks,
Chris

We’ve asked the user claiming to be Chris Carpenter to give us an interview and explain in detail why the people consider the Google Cash System a scam. We’re waiting for an answer.

The Google Cash system has been labeled as scam because the information from the e-book is outdated yet the affiliate websites still sells it. After paying a one-time shipping fee the users’ credit card is billed on monthly basis with sums hitting $80 (USD) and because the users have hard time unsubscribing from the service as the customer support ignores the support requests.

Stay tuned for further reference about the Google Cash System.