How Secure is Your AdWords Account?

Published by Stephen | Filed under AdWords, Passwords, Security

I have just read a thread over at WebProWorld that you really should know about if you are using AdWords to market your business.

The original post is headined ‘180.000 daily limit!‘ and is by someone called dracula.

dracula describes how he woke up one morning and checked his AdWords account to find that the account (today) had already spent $8900.00 on his behalf and although is it not mentioned in the post, I think the daily limit was set to $180,000. Somebody had found out the AdWords log in details, logged into the account and set up their own campaign using dracula’s money. The adverts created were for a maximum of $99 per click and where promoting a ringtone website.

The url is included in the post so I checked it out - the site is no longer up, the domain is registered to a Phred Jackson from California and was registered on the day before the scam took place.

Further on in the thread dragonfeet says the same thing happened to him. His AdWords account was hacked and taken for 15k in four days.

After a few frantic emails to Google and a few posts on WebProWorld (where a bit of doubt was shred on the credibility of the post initially due to the date - 1st April), Google has advised dracula that they will not be collecting the money owed. dragonfeet has had no response from Google yet and is no doubt still losing sleep.

How To Protect Your AdWords Account

To stop this happening to you make sure your password (and computer) is secure. Use a selection of letters, numbers and characters in your password.

The best method I know for creating passwords is to think of a sentence you can easily remember and use the first letter of each word. For example, My Favourite Gadget Is My Plasma TV would give me the password mfgimptv. You could even add a couple of memorable charcters for further security - mfgimptv*& and for even more security, add some numbers. Your house number, birthday or the year you were born would be good - how about this 7mfgimptv*&7.

Okay, having a password like that would be a real bugger to type in every time you wanted to access your AdWords account, but you get the idea. You should also change your login password on a regular basis and never write it down or tell anyone.

If you do spot anything suspicious on your AdWords account, contact Google and your credit card issuer straight away. A credit card number is not visible inside an AdWords account so it is unlikely the card will be cloned, but a credit card issuer may be able to help if Google cannot.

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