WARNING: These are scams. They are Emails sent to a honeytrap address only ever used for this purpose. Do not reply to these people, they will try to con you into paying out money in return for nothing.
CAVEAT: Please note that some of these Emails may be impersonating a genuine company or person. We wish to make it clear that any such name mentioned within these Emails has no connection to the scam. For the sake of searching, we leave these messages untouched, but we will respond to any concerns left in our comments.
You are not being sued. This notice affects your rights. Please read it carefully.
This Email appeared in my personal Gmail account – It immediately raised suspicions so I did my usual checks. General searching revealed that the background story is true – Google are being sued regarding a data breach at GooglePlus. But there are no recent updates in the mainstream media, the only recent posts are people asking about the legitimacy of the Email
After my checks, my conclusion is
“Ummmm”!
Unfortunately, this came to a personal Gmail account, so I do not have all the necessary forensic data available. But what I can see of the Email header, it all looked genuine.
There are links to the claim pages. These take you to a Google domain, but to their appserve pages – THIS IS SUSPICIOUS – This is a known trick – It looks like an official Google link, but it is a public hosted area – anyone can put a page on appserve.
OUR ADVICE – DO NOT CLICK THE LINKS
This is purely based on our usual advice – NEVER click a link in an Email. Our investigations revealed that the links are not working anyway.
The back story is true – Google plus is being sued under the court reference mentioned in the Email. Of course, this means nothing – scammers will often use genuine information in order to gain legitimacy.
One aspect in its favour is that this has only been received by my Gmail account which was used for GooglePlus. My other Gmail accounts – nothing. None of our Brendinghat honeypots have received a copy.
The Email talks about a claim website which exists and visually looks genuine. Again, alarm bells are ringing – it is not hosted by Google and the owner of the domain is hidden. Could be genuine – very likely a legal company would organize this independently of Google.
Obviously a claim would ask for your personal details. but is it safe? First of all, remember that we are talking about $12 maximum.
OUR ADVICE – GIVE IT A FEW DAYS BEFORE DOING ANYTHING.
The big problem is that there is nothing about this in the main stream media. But you have until October. Personally I would wait until I saw reports in the papers (although I am not actually eligible being a UK citizen).
Conclusion
It is genuine. There are still no reports in the mainstream press, but some techy sites have had it confirmed by Google e,g, https://9to5google.com/2020/08/04/many-receiving-settlement-notices-for-google-class-action-lawsuit/