Beware Adword's Evil Twin
It is one of the oldest tricks in television plots, the evil twin. Whenever a fledging series is looking for plot, insert evil twin to cause havoc and peril for the protagonist. This usually comes complete with "evil" mustache, goatee, or beard. Case in point, evil Michael Knight from Knight Rider...
It appears now, minus the facial hair and Motopia Dallas allure, that Adwords has an evil twin circulating through the internet. Several clients have emailed us questions concerning their Adwords campaign, saying that their ads have been suspended. This warning comes via email, with a link to the "Adwords Login" landing page to access the account and correct the problem.
However, this is not the Google Adwords login page, but rather a phishing site garnering your Adwords user and password information. Several signs that the email and the waring are not legitimate include:
- The URL - the redirect URL to the landing page should read adwords.google.com, whereas the phishing site URL read something like http://adwords.google.efr9ifd.cn/select/Login.
- Page Elements - the landing page looks enough like the Adword's homepage, but not exactly. Image load times and additional text can serve as warnings (I was going to include an image of the page, however it has been taken down in the past 12 hours).
- Browser warnings - Firefox's security feature caught the "suspected web forgery" and provided this warning