Beware: Google AdSense "Account Disabled" Phishing Scam

Yesterday, I, along with hundreds (if not thousands) of others received an email that appeared to be from Google. The email's subject line read "Google Adsense Account Disabled" and the email's from to looked to be from Google Adsense . It was actually caught by my spam filter and as I dug into the source code of the email, I noticed it was a scam. Beware, this is a recent phishing scam.

Here is how the email looked in my mail client:

There were a few glaring issues with this email:

(1) The source showed a few things, but here is one item that jumps out at me:

Received-SPF: softfail (google.com: domain of transitioning [email protected] does not designate 64.26.60.146 as permitted sender) client-ip=64.26.60.146;

(2) The email had an attached HTML file, when you open the source of that file (which I don't recommend most people do), it has a redirect to a non Google domain (phishing site):

(3) I checked if my ads were displaying and if I had any message in my AdSense console and I did not.

So I trashed the email and went on. Then I noticed other people receiving this phishing email, which is why I am writing about it.

Do not fall for the scam!

Forum discussion at Google AdSense Help and WebmasterWorld.