A note from Google AdWords: Can we help you?

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m0rtal

m0rtal

King of the Jungle
Jul 3, 2007
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Phishing attempt or is Google just smoking crack?

I got this today, actually the 2nd time I got it now but ignored it the first time. I recently opened up an MCC account and added another account so it makes sense that I would receive this due to a screw up even though I have ads running on all my accounts...

Hello,

We've noticed that your ads still aren't running on Google. We sent you an email last week with instructions for activating your AdWords account (we've included them below), but we wanted to reach out again and see if you needed any extra help.

If you're having trouble activating your account, or if you're not sure whether AdWords is right for your business, please let us know! We're here to help you get started and answer any nagging questions you have about AdWords. If you'd like help, simply reply to this email with your questions or concerns.

If you want to get started right now, you can activate your AdWords account and start showing your ads by following these instructions:

1. Sign in to your account at http://services.google.com/marketing/links/us-awalogin.
2. Click the "Create your first campaign" button.
3. Create your ad campaign. We'll walk you through the whole process, step by step.
4. Click the "Continue to billing" button.
5. Submit your billing information.

To learn more about AdWords, please visit the AdWords Help Center at AdWords Help Center. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Team


Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA USA 94043


Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about your AdWords account activation.

© 2008 Google Inc. Google is a trademark of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

------------------------------

So moving on, I reply asking them to stop sending me these reminders since there are ads running. Adwords support replies to me saying they have no record of any e-mails being sent to me. They also tell me this is a phishing attempt and that they are not their urls...ok so a few more e-mails (obviously it IS their urls) back and forth and they are still convinced it is a phishing attempt and are forwarding to the appropriate department.

Doesn't look like there's any backdoors here or anything but I'm still a little concerned.

Perhaps someone can pull out a similar e-mail they've received in the past for comparison?

I really think it's just a screw up on their end and the rep is just clueless but who knows. Better be safe than sorry.
 


I got the same e-mail on Oct. 30th, however without the:

"To learn more about AdWords, please visit the AdWords Help Center at AdWords Help Center. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available."
 
AMagz said:
That's a really weird email, and Google just redirects you to the Google homepage. You'd think if the email was truly from Google they would directly link you to https://adwords.google.com.
Click to expand...

No, the url in step 1 actually redirects to adwords login page.

beejeebers said:
It's a phishing attempt by a retarded person. They forgot the change the link that's all.
Click to expand...

You are probably right what doesn't make sense though is the email was from their support e-mail. If it was spoofed why did the spam filter not catch it? This is gmail btw. I'm pretty much clueless about how this is done but gmail catches this kind of stuff 99.9% of the time, I would think an e-mail spoofed as their support address would be caught 100% of the time. 2 of these e-mails went straight to the inbox.

What's also messed up is this a fairly new e-mail, maybe 2 months old and the MCC account and 2nd one under it is like 2 weeks old.
 
m0rtal said:
No, the url in step 1 actually redirects to adwords login page.
Click to expand...

I know what you mean, but I just thought it was weird that Google doesn't even have a "services.google.com" page, just a redirect to Google.com, know what i'm sayin?
 
My accounts on G-mail too, however I catch it in Thunderbird. I looked at all headers and the sender client IP was [SIZE=-1]209.85.198.223 (Google).
[/SIZE]
 
I guess forward it to a real email account where you can check the headers. You should see something like:

from rv-out-0304.google.com (rv-out-0304.google.com [209.85.198.223]) by mx.google.com with ESMTP id
 
Yeah, what I'm saying though is that you're going to get headers from google even though the original e-mail could have came from somewhere else because you're forwarding. All that does is tell you where the forward came from.
 
I'll forward it to support and see what I get for an answer. I can't find any older emails like this so now I'm curious. I'll let you know.

Anyhow, all my gmail headers contain that format:

Recieved: from (sender IP) by mx.google.com with ESMTP id xxxumptysquatxxx
 
Cool let me know. Btw, the first e-mail I got was on Oct 25th and titled "Activating Your Google AdWords Account". It also did not contain the adwords help center bit. Also came up empty trying to find something similar from them. Though one thing I did notice which the rep pointed out was that your customer ID is always attached when they send something out. This was the case with a few recent e-mails I went through, and they don't include their address either.
 
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