Last time, a lot of online scamming pages appeared. Google membership rewards scam is right among them. This website states that Google awards you a valuable prize, like a new iPhone or Amazon gift card. However, these pages are 100% fake, and below you will see the explanations of this fact.
Google membership scam is progressing
During the whole February, a lot of users on different platforms were complaining about the appearance of dubious pages, which are named as Google membership rewards, or Amarktflow.com prize. On this site, users were greeted with winning a perfect prize – new phone, or shopping certificate valued at $1000. However, as the site says, you need to answer several simple questions to get your reward, because there are several other contenders. In some cases, you need to complete the quiz instead of answering the questions. Sometimes the site says you are already a winner – I wish it will always be so easy.
Questions you will get in the process are very simple, or the answers are incorrect – at least this fact must raise suspicion. The fonts and design used on such web pages are also strange – they are more similar to ones that were in use around 2005-2012. However, as practice shows, people ignore this fact – greed blinds them. Remember – no one will give you $1000 or equal goods for nothing, even if it mimics the technological giant such as Google.
Of course, you get no real prize. These websites have only one target – to collect your personal information, and, probably, your credit card data. The last action may be disguised as a requirement to pay the delivery bill for your gift – just several dollars. Payment pages may look legit, and even copy the design of existing payment systems, like PayPal or MasterCard. However, everything you type on such a website will be transferred right to the website maintainers, who are likely malevolent.
Why do such pages appear in my web browser?
If you see the Google membership reward page, I have bad news for you. Your PC is infected with malware, highly-likely – adware1. This type of virus makes several changes into the user’s networking settings. After these changes, last starts seeing a big number of unwanted ads. Adware is not able to be really harmful for your PC itself. But can easily cause another malware appearance. Be very careful when clicking the banners – if they are generated with this malware, you may provoke the downloading of something much more harmful with this action.
Ways of getting infected with adware are enormously variable. This article describes them fully. However, there is no description of possible hazard carried by additional malware, which is spread with the help of that virus.
- Detailed article about adware on GridinSoft Knowledgebase