"We were unable to process your payment.
Your ads will be suspended soon unless we can process your payment.
To prevent your ads from being suspended, please update your payment information."
The letter then goes on to tell you to update your credit card info by clicking on a link that looks like it should go to a real Google Adwords page. However, if you hold your cursor over the link you see that the link has a .cn domain extension. Do NOT click on it.
Instead, use your web browser and type in the url: http://www.adwords.google.com/ to get to Adwords and log into your account to see if Google has been unable to bill you.
Remember, whenever you get a link to in email asking you to update credit card or bank information, you should NOT click it no matter how real it looks or whose email address the notice appears to come from.
If you worry that the alert might be real, call the company that supposedly sent the email and ask.
Google AdWords Phishing Scam
These phishing email messages seem to have the same common ingredient: Trying to convince the recipient to update personal account information by visiting a funny link within the message. Real banks, credit card companies, or institutions we do business with do not use links in email messages so clients could change account info. They always tell you the steps one must follow to do so, after you visit their main site.
Posted by: Javier Garcia on June 8, 2008 at 6:22 PM