If you have received an invitation to edit a Google Document last week on your school email, do not click on it; it is very possible that it was sent by a phisher. A phisher is someone who sends emails from a reputable company – such as Google – in order to scam people out of personal information such as passwords and credit card numbers. While the emails seem to have stopped, the attack affected other school districts as well. Google has also stated they will take steps to prevent this kind of attack in the future by providing updates to Safe Browsing as well as taking down fake pages on Google.

Mrs. Vallejo was happy to share her thoughts on the incident. When the event first started she “received notification from another teacher that they were receiving invites from  teachers with whom she did not regularly work to edit on Google Docs.” She was also “aware that other school districts across the nation were attacked also, not just Dublin High.” When she and other teachers approached Google about the issue, they “were advised by the District Office IT Services not to touch anything and beware of suspicious email invites until they could solve the problem.” In terms of actually getting rid of the issue,  all they could do was to send out emails warning others about the issue, which is how students and teachers across campus, became aware of the issues.
Even though the attacks seem to have slowed down, this whole episode should be taken as a warning sign, as phishers can hide behind the veil of any big corporation in order to steal information. This incident proves that even a secure, global company such as Google is not immune to such attacks, and that everyone should be more cautious on the Internet.