NOTE: If you're not that familiar with how URLs work and some graphs communicate, you might fall for this. This mail seems to come from Google, but it can work the same way with banks. (You may already be wondering what this post on Virusvaria does, but that will come naturally. Just read on, it can save you a lot of trouble.) As an example I take this email:
First, you probably receive this email from "admin@[yourdomain]" or from your own email address. That doesn't mean anything, they can 'spoof' that. A bank will use its own sender address, Google will not use your domain name either. So you have to pay attention.
If you hover your mouse over the "Upgrade account" button, you will see where that button leads. I have put the relevant link at the bottom of the picture. At the beginning you read: https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/vwn... etc. etc. Now Googleapis.com comes across as familiar so you would think that would be fine. Then it's about subdomain firebasestorage.googleapis.com so also good. After all, what is in front of the dot is part of the main domain.
However, if you read further in that URL, you will see another domain at some point and that turns out to be the actual main domain: .appspot.com. Also note that although ".com" is easily recognizable, there are also unknown domain extensions and new ones are being added all the time. So that too is a matter of being careful.
In this URL, this means that everything before the root domain appspot.com is all subdomains and folders are from appspot.com. So including 'googleapis.com', which is just a leaflet that they have cleverly created. SO I WOULDN'T CLICK ON THAT! Better to click once too little than once too many...
When in doubt (or better yet: ALWAYS), go to the account in question in your normal way and check how things are going.
Virological graphs?
That orange bar does not indicate 95% at all but 77.1%.
Moreover: 13.58GB of 15GB is not 95% but 90%.
And if upgrading is automatic, why do I have to do it anyway? All inconsistent messaging. All red flags.
They look like virologists! 😜
