{"id":3261,"date":"2010-11-02T21:30:32","date_gmt":"2010-11-03T04:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3261"},"modified":"2010-11-02T21:30:32","modified_gmt":"2010-11-03T04:30:32","slug":"dont-fall-for-this-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/02\/dont-fall-for-this-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&rsquo;t Fall For this Scam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I have received an email for one of my Gmail accounts, advising me I can claim a cash settlement over Google Buzz.&#160; I also received real ones did contain the key line below.&#160;&#160; It is a phishing scam.<\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal; margin: 0in; font-family: \" align=\"left\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><font style=\"font-size: 11pt\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: right; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"3scam\" border=\"0\" alt=\"3scam\" align=\"right\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/3scam.jpg\" width=\"320\" height=\"180\" \/>As a Gmail user in the United States, I just received an email that Google was obligated to send as a part of their class action lawsuit settlement regarding the way they introduced Google Buzz this past winter. The web site for the settlement is <\/font><\/font><font style=\"font-size: 11pt\"><a style=\"text-align: left\" href=\"http:\/\/www.buzzclassaction.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><font color=\"#0066cc\" face=\"Calibri\">here<\/font><\/a><font face=\"Calibri\"> and the PDF document that describes the settlement in detail can be found <\/font><a style=\"text-align: left\" href=\"http:\/\/www.buzzclassaction.com\/docs\/notice.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"><font color=\"#0066cc\" face=\"Calibri\">here<\/font><\/a><\/font><font face=\"Calibri\"><font style=\"font-size: 11pt\">.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal; margin: 0in; font-family: \" align=\"left\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><font style=\"font-size: 11pt\">Note that there is no cash settlement. For that matter, Gmail users pretty much don\u2019t get anything. After the lawyers and expenses are paid, the rest will be distributed to organizations that \u201cadvance the privacy interests of internet users such as the Class Members.\u201d<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal; margin: 0in; font-family: \" align=\"left\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><font style=\"font-size: 11pt\"><strong>Here\u2019s the key line from the email (straight from Google):<\/strong><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.375in; font-family: \" align=\"left\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><font style=\"font-size: 11pt\"><strong>Just to be clear, this is not a settlement in which people who use Gmail can file to receive compensation.<\/strong><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal; margin: 0in; font-family: \" align=\"left\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><font style=\"font-size: 11pt\">So if you get an email asking you to send back personal information to \u201cclaim your share of the settlement cash\u201d or directing you to a website to claim it, DON\u2019T FALL FOR IT. It\u2019s a scam. The only official website is linked above and it makes it pretty clear that you won\u2019t get any cash compensation from it.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: normal; margin: 0in; font-family: \" align=\"left\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><font style=\"font-size: 11pt\">Just wanted to get this out before the inevitable scams start flooding your Inbox\u2026 [<em>emphasis added<\/em>]<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Inserted from &lt;<a href=\"http:\/\/thebusinessprotector.com\/blog\/260\/google-buzz-class-action-settlement-announced-scams-certain-to-follow\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Business Protector<\/a>&gt;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Do not respond or give these people account information.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have received an email for one of my Gmail accounts, advising me I can claim a cash settlement over Google Buzz.&#160; I also received real ones did contain the key line below.&#160;&#160; It is a phishing scam. As a Gmail user in the United States, I just received an email that Google was obligated <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/02\/dont-fall-for-this-scam\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[141],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plus","category-141-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}