Aphishing email and a website masquerading as a legitimate Google service targeted thousands of people Wednesday, hoping they would supply personal information and spread the scam to others.

The scheme appears to take advantage of technology that the search engine giant makes available to any website allowing people to log in to them with their Google username and password. The websites can get access to information people store with Google, including their contacts.

In Wednesday’s scam, a sham website was labeled “Google Docs,” confusing people who believed they were on the real document-writing and -sharing platform. Instead, the fake Google Docs uses the newly gained list of contacts to send spam.

Read the full story at LATimes.com