Such fraudulent practices involve messages that appear to be from a legitimate source, or the creation of an official-looking webpage that asks you to provide your username and password or other personal information. Such messages or pages could ask for your Social Security number, bank account number, PIN number, credit card number, mother’s maiden name, or birthday.

Spammers often ask for this information in an attempt to steal your Gmail address, your money, your credit, or your identity.

Google is currently testing a service designed to alert Gmail users to messages that appear to be phishing attacks. When the Gmail Team becomes aware of such an attack, the details of these messages are used to automatically identify future suspected phishing attacks.

The result: when a Gmail user opens a suspected phishing message, Gmail displays a warning.

Gmail’s phishing alerts operate automatically, much like spam filtering. Gmail’s spam filters automatically divert messages that are suspected of being unwanted messages into ‘Spam’. Similarly, Gmail’s phishing alerts automatically display warnings with messages that are suspected of being phishing attacks so that users know to take care before providing any personal information.

You should always be wary of any message that asks for your personal information, or messages that refer you to a webpage asking for personal information. If you receive this type of message, especially from a source claiming to be Google or Gmail, please do not provide the information requested.