URGENT: Safe practices for accessing your Google Grants account

As you know from our recent email and blog post, we are now requiring organizations participating in Google Grants to actively manage their account and login at least once monthly. Please note that we will never email you with a link to your Google Grants AdWords account unless we are replying to an email you sent our team directly; you should always login on your own at adwords.google.com and never click on a link contained in an unsolicited email to access your account or update any personal information.

We've received reports from concerned grantees regarding a recent email asking the recipient to login to their AdWords account from a link included in that email. Please do not click on this link to access your account. Emails such as this are not sent by our team but are instead phishing emails from illegitimate sources. Also, keep in mind that emails from our team will always come from an email address with the google.com domain. Notice that we do not use a gmail.com domain, nor do we use a googlegrants.com domain when sending out emails to our grantees. Please review more information and tips to avoid getting hooked by phishing attacks on the Official Google Blog. Here are a few high-level tips to steer clear of phishing attacks:

• Be careful about responding to emails that ask you for sensitive information.
  
• Go to the site yourself, rather than clicking on links in suspicious emails.
  
• If you're on a site that's asking you to enter sensitive information, check for signs of anything suspicious.
  
• Be wary of the "fabulous offers" and "fantastic prizes" that you'll sometimes come across on the web.
  
• Use a browser that has a phishing filter.
  

Posted by Kristie Ferketich, Google Grants Team