Please be aware that I’m still regularly hearing reports of people who have received AdWords ‘phishing’ emails.

These appear to be genuine communications from Google asking you to renew your AdWords account or update your AdWords payment details, but are in fact scams cleverly designed to steal your credit card details.

You can identify the bogus emails by carefully rolling your mouse over the link in the email to view the popup tooltip; then carefully examine the domain details.

The phishing emails typically link to a Chinese domain which is dot cn (i.e. .cn) rather than the domain it appears to be.

Please be vigilant and under no circumstances enter your credit card details. If you do, then contact your bank immediately to freeze your credit card.

If you receive a phishing email, forward it to phishing@google.com so the folks at Google can do something about stopping these thieves.

If you are in doubt about your AdWords account’s status you can check it online. Once your AdWords account is established, the only time you should have to re-enter payment details is when your credit card expires.

If in doubt, don’t click.