Security News > 2020 > April > Google: We've blocked 126 million COVID-19 phishing scams in the past week

In the past week, an average of 18 million COVID-19 phishing emails were sent per day via Gmail to unsuspecting marks, according to Google.

Google said its malware scanner uses deep-learning tech to detect malware on 300 billion attachments each week, and 63 per cent of dodgy docs blocked by Gmail are different from day to day.

Kumaran and Lugani said Google prevents 100 million phishing mails daily from reaching their targets and "During the last week, we saw 18 million daily malware and phishing emails related to COVID-19".

"This is in addition to more than 240 million COVID-related daily spam messages. Our machine learning models have evolved to understand and filter these threats, and we continue to block more than 99.9 per cent of spam, phishing and malware from reaching our end users," they said.

The guidance dished out by Google today includes basic common-sense hygiene: run a security checkup; don't download stuff you don't recognise; check the integrity of URLs before providing login creds or clicking a link; avoid and report phishing emails; and, unsurprisingly, consider signing up to the Choc Factory's Advanced Protection Programme.

News URL

https://go.theregister.co.uk/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/17/google_coronavirus_spam/