Image by Montse González from Pixabay
According to this email, your photo has been successfully published on Google Photos. The email includes a link that supposedly opens a Google Photos album with the newly published image.
However, Google Photos did not send the notification and the link does not open an online photo album.
Instead, clicking the link opens one of several decidedly dodgy websites that claim that you can win prizes or get free products by providing your name and contact details.
However, if you proceed, your information will be shared with “prize sponsors” and third-party marketing companies. Thus, you will soon begin receiving marketing phone calls, emails, and text messages touting the benefits of a range of suspect products and services you most likely neither want nor need.
Some of the websites may also ask for your credit card details, supposedly so that you can pay for postage on a “free” offer or giveaway.
Any company that is willing to send out such fake emails as a means of promoting themselves should never be trusted with your personal and financial details.
Scam emails like this are common. Another very similar version, which also purports to be from Google, falsely claims that your files have been published on Google Drive. Again, links in the email open scam websites.
Alternative versions may be phishing scams designed to steal your email account login credentials.
If you receive one of these scam emails, just delete it.
A screenshot of the scam email:
Transcript:
Subject: Your photo has been successfully published
Google Photos
Your photo has been successfully published.2 albums, 4 photos
F.A.Q.View albums
© 2020 Google Photos Service.
Importance Notice
After considerable thought and with an ache in my heart, I have decided that the time has come to close down the Hoax-Slayer website.These days, the site does not generate enough revenue to cover expenses, and I do not have the financial resources to sustain it going forward.
Moreover, I now work long hours in a full-time and physically taxing job, so maintaining and managing the website and publishing new material has become difficult for me.
And finally, after 18 years of writing about scams and hoaxes, I feel that it is time for me to take my fingers off the keyboard and focus on other projects and pastimes.
When I first started Hoax-Slayer, I never dreamed that I would still be working on the project all these years later or that it would become such an important part of my life. It's been a fantastic and engaging experience and one that I will always treasure.
I hope that my work over the years has helped to make the Internet a little safer and thwarted the activities of at least a few scammers and malicious pranksters.
A Big Thank You
I would also like to thank all of those wonderful people who have supported the project by sharing information from the site, contributing examples of scams and hoaxes, offering suggestions, donating funds, or helping behind the scenes.I would especially like to thank David White for his tireless contribution to the Hoax-Slayer Facebook Page over many years. David's support has been invaluable, and I can not thank him enough.
Closing Date
Hoax-Slayer will still be around for a few weeks while I wind things down. The site will go offline on May 31, 2021. While I will not be publishing any new posts, you can still access existing material on the site until the date of closure.Thank you, one and all!
Brett Christensen,
Hoax-Slayer
