If you’ve ever been hit with a sketchy text warning you of an overdue toll road payment or mysterious U.S. Postal Service fees, you’ve likely been targeted by one of the largest cyber scams sweeping the globe.
Now, Google is suing an international cybercrime group it believes is responsible for the ubiquitous text-based phishing scheme, which may have raked in as much as $1 billion over the last three years. In the lawsuit filed Wednesday, Google alleges that 25 people are part of a sprawling scam operation known as “Lighthouse” that was designed to swipe the logins and passwords of victims caught in its web.
The Lighthouse scam hinges on tricking people with bogus texts, prompting them to click a link and share their credentials on fake websites. The sites display legitimate-looking logos of brands such as Google, Gmail, and YouTube in hopes of convincing potential victims that their fake web pages are real, hence the company’s involvement. Google says that it found 107 website templates misusing Google branding on their sign-in screens in order to fool people into thinking those sites are safe and actually connected to Google’s products.
I don’t trust google either, but kudos to them for exposing this elaborate scam