Don't trust Google Alerts to keep out dodgy links

The most powerful weapon in the phishers’ arsenal is trust. Once you have that, no matter how fantastical the promise, there’s a good chance your victim will fall for it. At one end of the spectrum, conmen may forge email addresses or obfuscate URLs to make you think a message comes from some trusted source, while at the other end they clone entire banking websites. Trust is so powerful that it needs to be handled carefully by those who possess it, lest it get into the wrong hands. You might imagine that Google would take extra care to check that any links it passes on are authentic. So when PC Pro reader Dave Webster got in touch to tell me about his recent experience with Google Alerts, alarm bells started ringing.