Before we go ahead with the article I’ll quote Google‘s basic definition of ‘Phishing’ websites – “A page designed to look like another page in an attempt to steal users’ personal information.” Now we’ll see how we can report phishing websites and pages to Google so that they can take necessary actions and eliminate them from the Internet.
Phishing is a criminal activity and people also do the same with email addresses. Cyber criminals usually implement the social engineering tactics to make the users comfortable and gain their trust. When I started my Blogging journey I used to browse in an Internet cafe, since it’s a public computer, people often misuse them and install various software/plugins/extensions. They then create phishing login URLs for Orkut, Gmail and much more. They look 95% genuine because it’s easy to implement the same HTML and CSS effects by copying the original source code.
Report Phishing Websites And Pages
Go to Google’s “Report a Phishing Page” link and enter the URL of that website (Domain name) or any specific page of that website.
That’s it. Be as detailed as possible. If you remember from where you got the link, say a forum thread or Facebook post, do mention that as well. I have personally witnessed plenty of phishing websites (and emails) for Facebook, Popular Banks (like Axis, HDFC, etc.), Gmail, PayPal, etc. If you are confused about a website’s authenticity, do give a Google search or speak with the officials of that brand regarding their main domain name URL.
ENCOUNTERED A SITE HAVING MALICIOUS CONTENT? DID YOU REPORT IT?
People don’t really get much profit from creating phishing links for Facebook, but as far as I have seen, they use those profiles for misusing/messaging your contacts, spreading the links further.
If you know any other official and standard links to report phishing websites and pages do kindly share them in the comments below.
Hi Pradeep,
Thanks for sharing such a useful information with us. It will be of great use.
Do you know how long it takes to remove a phishing page ?
I don’t have an exact idea mate. But I have personally reported and seen such websites getting de-indexed from Google. It depends on how hard the case is.