Beware of Google Toolbar updates not from Google

Another round of spam is hitting mailboxes. It purports to be from Google, encouraging you to download the latest version of their toolbar.

Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 15:22:09 -0500 (PDT)
From: Google Updates <tutelage@patent-ideas.com>
Subject: New Google Toolbar Released

Take the power of Google with you anywhere on the Web Google Toolbar Gets Personal

Users Can Now Customize their Search Experience with Latest Version of Google Toolbar

The beta versions of Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer and Google Toolbar for Firefox are currently available in more than 16 languages. Both versions of Google Toolbar - Standard and Enterprise - run on Windows XP and support Internet Explorer 6.0 and higher.

More information on the new versions of Google Toolbar is available at http://toolbar.google.com/.

Needless to say, the link at the bottom of the spam doesn't actually take you to Google, but instead to a site in Portugul (already 404-compliant — nice to see somebody on the ball somewhere) that looks like Google but almost certainly contains malware of some sort.

Remember boys 'n girls, always check to see where a link takes you before clicking on it.