Gmail Scam Attempt

[GLK_100]

Over the last week I was receiving emails saying someone in France and England was trying to recover my account. Obviously I declined the confirmation attempts and moved on.
Changed password. Confirmed my secondary recovery account and phone number information.

Today, I was called by a google number:

+1 (650) 253-0000

And a guy with a very Californian accent said he was contacting me from google because they saw some unauthorized attempts to access my account, and he wanted to confirm that with me— and help take steps to secure my account and prevent further recovery attempts from outside of the US.
He said he would need to send a confirmation prompt to my phone, and I’d have to accept it.

He sent an account recovery prompt from California, and said i need to accept the prompt to confirm my identity and ownership of the account.

He was trying to actively recover my account and steal possession of it, while on the phone with me.

I said “google would never operate this way, you’re scamming me.”
He assured me he wasn’t and that I could google search his phone number and see it was google, and said I could even call back and someone could reconnect our call if I wanted to be sure.

He was completely bluffing— as when you call that number you cannot get a human on the line. They don’t staff that line with agents.

Obviously, I didn’t accept the prompt but just wanted to catalog this somewhere so people searching in the future have something to read.

The best thing I’ve read regarding these attempts is “google will NEVER call you out of the blue. They don’t care about your account.” Be highly suspicious and never give anyone a code or password and never accept those recovery prompts unless you are 10000% certain YOU issued them.

[Ever-young]

It's a good thing that you didn't accept the prompt and realized it was an obvious scam attempt, better more for bringing it to the notice of everyone here. I know for many here, this is an old trick, but that doesn't change the fact that there are actually others who are still naive of this trick and would effortlessly fall victim of it, which makes it very helpful that this notice has been brought here so they can also take note, just incase they receive a similar call. Because I know say as long as nah oyibo man voice some of us hear there, them go actually just believe say Na actually from Google and just freely give out their account to scammers.

[Ronsbit]

OP, this is is an old fashioned scam. Scammers who does this type are people that know their victims and how they can be easily convinced to manipulate them. I have also had this experience too where a scammer called me to send a code sent toy phone number as they are trying to recover my account for me and I asked them which account to be precised they told me and I have been receiving OTC that day on different time intervals till they called but I myself am informed so I can not fall for such pranks.

It is nice that we do not easily give in to scammers because they told us they are customer care or that and their usual stories they do tell to get their victims. Just be very careful not to tell them anything otherwise your account is gone. They've ruined so many people by this act and more still are going to fall victim of this of we do not keep updating the platform with such informations so that newbies would know.