A recent blog in Digital Trends highlights Google’s battle with security threats and there is arguably no security threat bigger than clicking on a link from an email. Google’s solution is to have a pop up appear after you click on a suspicious link, and then another warning will appear giving you two opportunities to back out of the link. Most people think of malicious links as attempts to steal your identity for online fraud, but there is much larger issue: State-Sponsored attacks.
Countries are taking their battles online. State-Sponsored malicious links have an incentive to infect as many of our electronic devices as possible with their software, which will give them an opportunity to attack on a scale and time of their choosing. Google has been battling networks for years in their battle against link spam. Their ability to identify and mark link spam networks has really improved over the last few years. Yet it is a constant battle of just trying to contain and limit the abuse. State-Sponsored networks have a much greater chance of staying ahead of Google’s detection. If Google does think that any of your email links are connected to State-Sponsored spam, it is going to display a full page warning before allowing you to open. We would certainly advise not opening those links.
Google has another layer of detection by scanning documents on your computer as you try to share within Google Docs. There will be a warning that the document is infected before allowing you to actually share.
Every time Google takes a measure to identify a suspicious link or network, there are legitimate links that are caught in their algorithm filters. This could cause perception issues for your brand. If you think that this is happening, contact us at Entangle Media to inspect the issue.
It is possible that many of State-Sponsored ways to infiltrate our devices will become depressingly futile to prevent. But this should be some motivation to do those extra security layers such as changing passwords, using complex passwords, and 2-factor authentication.
