Google’s Gmail under phishing attack

India’s 71 million internet and close to 10 million broadband users are increasingly becoming the victims of vicious phishing attacks that can result in identity theft, danger to life and even crippling financial fraud.

On Wednesday, users of Google’s email services received a legal notice from the gmail team asking them to update their account details for security reasons.

“Gmail Team is working on total security on all accounts in order to make Gmail better as ever and as a result of this security upgrade we require all Gmail members to verify their account with Google. To prevent your account from disability you will have to update your account by clicking the reply button and filling the space below,” the mail read.

The legal notice from Gmail wanted users to refurbish their account name, password, occupation, birth date and country of residence. It also carried a threat that users who did not update their details within 7 days of receiving the warning would lose their account permanently.

However, when contacted, a Google spokesperson said, “Some spammers send fraudulent mass-messages designed to collect personal information, called ‘spoofing’ or ‘password phishing’. We always advise our users to be wary of any
message that asks for your personal information, or messages that refer you to a webpage asking for personal information. Google or Gmail does not send unsolicited mass messages asking for passwords or personal information; even if the message asking for it claims to be from us, please don’t believe it.”

This information is publicly available in the Gmail support center at http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=8253

According to Rakshit Tandon, consultant safe surfing with the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI ), “Phishing activity has been on the rise across India since December. The biggest targets for cyber criminals
are banking sites followed by free email sites like Gmail and Yahoo and social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut,” he said.

The IAMAI runs cyber safety programmes and has already worked with 3,50,000 students in 185 schools across 43 cities and 13 states.

“A schoolteacher in Mumbai lost close to Rs 10 lakh after phishers got into her netbanking account. Internet penetration is going up which is inviting more criminal attacks as awareness levels are very low,” adds Tandon.

His advise is to be investigative and use logic (BIUL) when using the Net in order to improve your personal Internet security levels.

71 mln People used the Internet in India Last Year

According to a recent report published by the Internet in India [I-Cube], Internet and Mobile Association of India [IAMAI] and IMRB, 71 million people claimed to have used internet in  the country in the year 2009.

This number, in a country of over a billion, is hardly anything to cheer about. This 71 million figure also includes people who use the Internet very rarely. In fact, according to the report, about 52 million Internet users in India access it on a regular basis. Just to clarify, “active users” comprise people who access the Internet at least once a month! Anyway, according to the report, the number of these active users showed a steep rise over the figures in 2008 when there were 42 million regular users. This translates to a year on year growth of 19 percent.

The interesting thing to note here is that the surge in numbers has been attributed to the increased numbers of the users in the remote urban pockets (small metros and towns) and among lower socio-economic classes. This development has been more striking this year as the combined usage of these geographies and classes have overtaken top cities and higher socio-economic classes in numbers. This finding clearly indicates that the Internet has reached to remote masses in urban India.

The report further states that Internet usage has gone up from 9.3 hrs/week, to 15.7 hrs/week i.e. a steep 70 percent rise. The reason can be attributed to innovative content delivery, better and its increased use for entertainment purposes, which comprises downloading music or videos, socializing through social networking sites and expressing one’s own opinions and views through micro-blogging and user-generated content sites.

The report also reaffirms that the Indian youth continues to drive the surge in Internet use and form major portion of the total users. Among youths, the Internet is primarily being used for searching general information and for entertainment.

While things do look rosy when we think about some aspects, India still has a long way to go before it can become an Internet superpower. With most of us plagued by high bandwidth costs and inferior IT, a lot of things need to change before we see the number of Internet users rivalling the number of mobile phone subscribers in the country.