Google vs China - Googles response to attacks by China

In a search to verify a "Notice of Proposed Class Action Settlement involving Skype Credits" settlement I came across this article Google Web Blog News - A new approach to China 1/12/2010 03:00:00 PM Since Christmas I have been receiving phishing emails that forges my email address. All the phishing emails had two things in common - my email address is forged and they all lead to sites in China supposedly selling prescription drugs via "Canadian Pharmacy". All the Chinese "Canadian Pharmacy" sites have one thing in common - they use the same graphics hosted on Flickr.com. Flickr.com is owned by Yahoo! Inc.


Google's news blog article states "discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses--including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors--have been similarly targeted. ..." This begs the question - has Yahoo! mail been compromised? About the same time my phishing attach started, I started receiving messages from a friend's deactivated Yahoo.ca email account. Most of those messages linked to, you guessed it, "Canadian Pharmacy" in China with the same graphics hosted on Flickr.com

As usual, I report these phishing attacks, involving my Gmail address, to the ISP the messages originate from. But they kept on coming. I changed tactic and started cc.: Google/Gmail abuse. The phishing attacks kept coming. I changed tactic again and starting suggesting that Google should block the IP addresses of the ISPs whose members' computers are involved in forging my Gmail address. In all phishing attacks that uses Flickr.com, I also cc.: them also suggesting Google black list them as well for allowing their service to be used by Chinese agents.

Google's news blog article shows Google does takes security seriously and will do what ever it takes to keep their services secure. Even if it means ending ties with foreign countries.